Shoulder to the Wheel

Reformat and reinstall approach to organizational change rarely works

2012-01-20T09:50:00.000-05:00

Re: the Harvard Library Town Hall event that happened yesterday:

I'm starting from the assumption that the library's management are extremely competent, that what happens and unfolds is what they intended, and is in line with their goals and objectives. (I should also mention that I do not envy them in their task.)

Chris Bourg (whose summary is linked to above), noted that:

The general sentiment on twitter is that the senior administrators at Harvard Libraries handled this very poorly — that the town hall meetings produced more questions than answers. Rather than serving to keep staff informed, they served primarily to created significant anxiety.

While I agree entirely with this sentiment, there is a perspective from which management's handling of this isn't poor at all, but an accepted approach to organizational change.

The Harvard Library is embarking on a massive organizational change, impacting much of the library. Organizational culture, "how things are done around here", is likely to be a major obstruction to change. Organization culture resides primarily (but not entirely) in people. In teaching about organizational change, I've often joked that the extreme tactic to bringing about organizational change is to fire everyone and hire new people. The Harvard Library hasn't gone that far, but it is clear that they have decided to bring about the needed organizational change in a short amount of time, and the impact on their people, their careers, and their personal lives is not very high on the list of priorities.

If you look at the resource page the library has created to support their staff through the transition, it is clear that management already has 100% of the details worked out. However, they are specifically choosing not to share these details with the people affected. As a result, everyone is subjected to the same fear and uncertainty; everyone is snapped out of their daily routine, their future shattered.

At this point, everyone is anxious, seeking resolution and certainty, grateful to anyone who can provide it.

From what I understand, the details of the changes will only be available in the spring. Months away. Long enough for the anxiety to build to a level where some folks will choose to resolve the situation by leaving and finding work elsewhere. Regardless of their value as librarians, these folks would have been an impediment to organizational change anyway, so having them leave now will make later change management that much easier.

Then, when the details are revealed, of those who are still there, those who do not have to reapply to their positions will be extremely grateful, and ready to move forward in the new organization. Those that are let go and offered the chance to reapply for position in the new organization will be highly motivated to conform to whatever requirements the new positions and structure requires.

Some positions will remain unfilled after this process. Management gets to bring in the kind of people they want.

The library moves forward with the transition, with the people best suited for the challenges that lay ahead, motivated and ready to do what it takes for the Library to succeed.

That's the theory at least. It rarely works that way. Organizational culture is highly resistant to change. As long as you keep most/some of the people, no matter what you put them through, you will not succeed in reformatting the organization and reinstalling the organizational culture that you want.

Instead, the organizational culture will absorb the change and be transformed by it. People will not forget how they were treated, and the entire history of what happened and how people choose to react to this mistreatment will become embedded in the culture. It will persist beyond the presence of any one person or group of people. It will be passed on to new hires who were not subjected to the transition process. And it will manifest itself in behaviours that are, shall we say, not aligned with management's plans for moving forward.

I strongly believe that people are an organization's most valuable asset, and any organization that fails to realize this and treat them as such will likely see a good portion of its energies devoted to dealing with or compensating for internal problems instead of focusing on achieving its own goals.

Things may end up working well for the Harvard Library, but I'm afraid that by choosing this approach to organizational change, the administration has made the task before them that much harder, the mountain a little steeper, a little higher, then it was or needed to be.

Update

2012-01-17T09:05:00.000-05:00

I should be doing something else. I have a table with a small stack of blank paper, three freshly sharpened pencils, my course folder, an article, a print-out of my deck from last year's lecture, a small pile of notes and a head full of ideas of what I want to cover in tonight's lecture.

So call this procrastinating, but seeing "November 18" across the top of this page was bothering me. Besides, I need to get the juices flowing before I dive into the day's work.

Although I'm not sure what to write by way of an update. I'll admit that with all the sharing I do on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Instagram (no web URL!), etc, I'm having a harder time these days seeing exactly how this blog fit into the larger picture of how I communicate with the rest of the world. I had been using it to host a feed for my podcast, but I think it is safe to say that my podcasting effort is on hiatus for the forseeable future. I had thought about it as a place for longer-than-140-character shares of a non-work nature, which is certainly could be.

If I dig into it, I think that if I were to somehow find the wherewithal to produce something worthwhile here (ok, just to produce something, anything), I'm feeling uncertain about Blogger as the platform of choice. The safe bet seems to me to be to assume that Google will eventually try to wrap and roll this all into Google+ some way. So sticking with Blogger would for me mean decided to make an effort and build/grow my presence in Googlespace (connecting with people via Google+, etc). It would be a bit of a hedged bet, and somewhat greasy as an concept, but... ok, this is starting to sound like a plan of some sort. Better leave that here for now.

I will be starting a new blog, though. This one will be 100% focused on my work as a librarian, and will be part of the blogging initiative we're rolling out at work. Part leading by example, part eating my own dog food, and part fulfilling the need I have to communicate with others about what I do. I'll post a link here once that happens.

Right now, though, I really need to pull together tonight's course and deal with the rest of the tasks the day has lined up for me.

Oups, already drained my cup of coffee...

So a refill first, and then back to it.

audioblog / slight deviation

2011-11-18T11:35:00.001-05:00

Awareness that things are ever so slightly off the desired trajectory. [mp3]

This has all been going on for some time now...

2011-11-01T12:25:00.003-04:00

If you'll permit me, I'd like to share a longish but interesting quote from Cobbett's Rural Rides, Volume 1 (published in 1853), which I recently finished reading:

The blame is not the landowner's; it is nobody's; it is due to the infernal funding and taxing system, which of necessity drives property into large masses in order to save itself ; which crushes little proprietors down into labourers; and which presses them down in that state, there takes their wages from them and makes them paupers, their share of food and raiment being taken away to support debt and dead-weight and army and all the rest of the enormous expenses, which are required to sustain this intolerable system. Those, therefore, are fools or hypocrites who affect to wish to better the lot of the poor labourers and manufacturers, while they, at the same time, either actively or passively, uphold the system which is the manifest cause of it. Here is a system which, clearly as the nose upon your face, you see taking away the little gentleman's estate, the little farmer's farm, the poor labourer's meat-dinner and Sunday-coat; and while you see this so plainly, you, fool or hypocrite, as you are, cry out for supporting the system that causes it all! Go on, base wretch; but remember, that of such a progress dreadful must be the end. The day will come when millions of long-suffering creatures will be in a state that they and you now little dream of. All that we now behold of combinations and the like are mere indications of what the great body of the suffering people feel, and of the thoughts that are passing in their minds. The coaxing work of schools and tracts will only add to what would be quite enough without them. There is not a labourer in the whole country who does not see to the bottom of this coaxing work. They are not deceived in this respect. Hunger has opened their eyes. I'll engage that there is not, even in this obscure village of Stoke Charity, one single creature, however forlorn, who does not understand all about the real motives of the school and the tract and Bible affair as well as Butterworth, or Riving- ton, or as Joshua Watson himself.

I provide this as a counter-example to anyone who claims, believes, or acts as though there is nothing to be learned from the past, and that consequently, the ideas of the past are not worth preserving.

The end of Blogger as a podcasting platform?

2011-10-22T17:41:00.001-04:00

Blogger is used by many podcasters as way of generating RSS feeds that can be fed into the iTunes Store or directly into the users' iTunes software to subscribe to the podcast. The functionality that makes this possible is the ability to specify an enclosure link for a post (this is just a link to the MP3 file that you've hosted on another site).

From what I can tell, this capability is missing from the Blogger's new admin UI. For the moment, the new admin UI is optional, but Google recently announced that "all accounts will eventually be permanently upgraded" to the new UI. Once that happens, it will no longer be possible to use Blogger to host your podcast.

I'm thinking of setting up a simple free site on WordPress.com just for this purpose (I think they support enclosures...?) and making the switch now if only for the podcast/audio content that I post here.

If anyone has any news, insights, or better ideas, please share them in the comments.

E-books, Amazon, and the hard job of making trade-offs

2011-10-20T10:17:00.001-04:00

Sarah Houghton recently posted a video calling Amazon and Overdrive out for their library e-book service. Apparently, when a patron borrows an e-book through this service, as the due date for the e-book approaches, Amazon will email them letting them know that their e-book will expire shortly, but that they can have access to it permanently for the low price of... you get the picture.

In other words, Amazon is using the library as a 'try before you buy' service, allowing it to target advertizing at qualified leads (i.e. people who by borrowing a book have self-selected themselves as potential customers to purchase said book).

There are a few issues here. Privacy is a big one, since the privacy of patron circulation information is a given within the library community. Or at least it used to be. Any library subscribing to the Overdrive/Amazon service either didn't do their homework or they were fine with this information being passed on to a third-party. My guess, however, is that this isn't the only case where a vendor of e-resources collects user data beyond what would normally be permitted in libraries.

(This is only a hunch. I don't have specific examples if this, but if you do, please share in the comments.)

The fact that libraries are paying for this service to boot makes this breach of patron privacy even harder to swallow. However, I do wonder how the discussion would change if the pricing were different. What if the books offered through this service were deeply discounted to libraries, allowing them to stretch their shrinking budgets even further? What if there was a pricing model based on the library's ability to pay, with some libraries getting access to some or all books for free? Would the library's traditional stance on privacy hold?

I don't think it would. Given the public's general lack of concern over privacy, and the fight for survival that many libraries are facing today, I think that many libraries would accept the sharing of patron information and sign up for this service. If it means being able to stay open, being able to continue to promote learning and literacy, being able to continue to be a resource and gathering place for their communities, a suitably priced service such as this would likely be very successful.

(I wonder how much of a premium libraries would be willing to spend to remove this automated sales pitch from the service?)

While patron privacy is an important value for many (most?) librarians (including myself), we may need to start investigating whether our communities share our concerns. Privacy is likely to be one concern among many and, in most cases, not very high on the priority list. We need to continue to work with our communities, as we have always done, to come to a shared understanding of the values and priorities for the library, and to develop collections and deliver services that respect those values.

Cloud-based solutions are not always the silver bullet libraries are looking for

2011-10-18T10:38:00.006-04:00

Yesterday, Roy Tennant penned a short post on why he felt that, because of cloud offerings from library vendors, library system administrators were on their way to becoming obsolete. While there is more than a little truth in what he writes, to say that cloud computing eliminates the need for system administrators exaggerates the simplicity and reliability of these systems. In addition, after reading his post I was concerned that readers, and specifically library administrators not familiar with cloud computing, might conclude that cloud-based systems are the silver-bullet, cost-saving solution they are looking for.

(I attempted to leave a comment on Tennant's blog, but it is still "awaiting moderation", despite a subsequent comment having been approved. Fortunately, I can still share my thoughts here.)

Tennant's original post was titled, If You Are a Library SysAdmin, You are TOAST. The comment that I submitted was a take off the title,

If you are a library administrator who thinks that cloud-based applications can be deployed “with a few clicks”, you are TOAST.

If you are a library administrator who thinks that cloud-based applications will run themselves once they have been deployed, you are TOAST.

I agree with Tennant in that if your job as a system administrator consists largely of minding the machines, of rebooting machines, killing, starting, and restarting processes, applying patches, etc, then yes your job, like almost all library jobs, is likely to be under significant pressure to change in the coming years. In some cases, that change could very well see the elimination of the position entirely.

(It is worth noting that cloud computing is not the only cause of these pressures on libraries, nor are library system administrators the only library professionals that are subject to these pressures.)

My comments above outline the two main concerns that Tennant's post raised for me. They don't touch on my more general concerns with the way cloud services are oversold these days, and I'll come to that point later.

My first concern is that librarians, and specifically library administrators, will come away with the idea that an implementing cloud-based solutions are, as Tennant has suggested, as simple as setting up a Wordpress blog. While implementing a cloud-based ILS does offer certain advantages (i.e. you don't need to worry about setting up the hosting infrastructure and installing the software), a lot of the complex and hard work remains to be done. Granted, this is not all work that a system administrator might traditionally be involved in, but there is still a lot of very technical work to be done.

My second concern is that library administrators might similarly think that once the cloud-based system has been implemented, that there will be little to no administration or maintenance work to be done. This may be true for a simple system like Wordpress, but less so the case with complex ILS systems.

Librarians should also be aware that while cloud-based services have the potential to improve and in fact transform how libraries manage their information systems, these are still early days. These systems are a long way from being mature, and moving to a cloud-based ILS, for example, will mean making significant tradeoffs. These systems still have a long way to go to before they can provide libraries with the flexibility, security, and reliability of an ILS that is hosted in-house. I think it is also safe to assume that migrating from one vendor's cloud-based ILS to another vendor would be non-trivial.

(I recommend that you read through the comments to Tennant's original post, as they do a better job of articulating some of the trade-offs that cloud-services present.)

While we can probably assume that ILS vendors have worked at and will continue to work at improve their offerings, the reality is that moving to one of these solutions means accepting these kinds of tradeoffs. Unfortunately, the economic realities that libraries face mean that in most cases the promise of cloud-based solution reducing costs will trump all other concerns. As long as the functionality is good enough, cloud solutions will remain a very attractive option for libraries.

If cost is to be the prime driver for moving to a cloud-based solution, then library administrators need to make sure that they understand the true cost savings and are not overly optimistic in how much they are going to save. If not, the money they do save (assuming they do) may not be enough in the end to justify the other trade-offs they decided to accept.

Seeking suggestions for textbooks for MLIS web design course

2011-10-13T11:24:00.011-04:00

This coming winter I'll be teaching GLIS 634 Web System Design and Management at McGill's School of Information Studies. For the past few years I've been using the following books as the required texts for the course:

Krug, Steve (2006). Don't Make Me Think (Second Edition). Indianapolis, IN: New Riders.
Rosenfeld, Louis, and Morville, Peter (2007). Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (Third Edition). Sepastopol, CA: O’Reilly.
Lynch, Patrick J., and Sarah Horton (2008). Web Style Guide (Third Edition). New Haven: Yale University Press.

Taken together, I find that they do a good job of covering usability, information architecture, ~~and the fundamentals of coding HTML and CSS~~.*

While I haven't finished polishing up the syllabus yet, the bookstore is asking us to get our orders in now. I'm fairly certain I'll be keeping these as the textbooks for the course, but if anyone has any suggestions for alternative titles, please share them as a comment below.

Even if I don't end up adopting them as a required textbook, I will certainly look into making sure that students have access to any that compliment those that I've listed above.

--

* Actually, For HTML and CSS coding, I typically point students to online resources. If someone is looking for a textbook on the subject, I recommend Elizabeth Castro's HTML, XHTML & CSS (Sixth Edition, 2007). Recommendations for other coding books are also appreciated.

audioblog / update

2011-10-06T15:20:00.001-04:00

Explaining why so long since the last podcast. [mp3]

IKEA redesigns Billy bookshelf to hold larger books

2011-09-13T13:22:00.000-04:00

When this article in the Economist announced that IKEA was redesigning its Billy bookshelf to have deeper shelves in order to accommodate things other than books, many concluded that this signaled the end of the book.

From what I can tell, the depth of the shelves is the only change, meaning that the shelves will do a better job holding deeper and/or over-sized books. Unless IKEA reduces the weight capacity of the shelves, all they have done is make the Billy bookshelves that much more versatile.

Once could say that if IKEA is in fact adjusting its marketing of the Billy bookshelf away from book storage, that this points to a trend that book storage is no longer what its customers are looking for, meaning that the 'demise of the book' theory isn't all that off base.

You could also say that IKEA has taken note of the various uses people have found for the Billy bookcase and determined that with this small design change they could increase the versatility of the shelves that much more and in doing so increase sales. This is the explanation that rings truest for me.

audioblog / slowtochange

2011-08-17T13:49:00.000-04:00

audioblog / makebreakhabits

2011-08-11T11:59:00.000-04:00

Know your enemy

2011-08-10T09:11:00.004-04:00

This morning while scanning my incoming stream I came across the headline, 10 Facts About Steve Jobs We Just Learned From CNBC's Latest "Titans" Special. Always interested in learning a bit more about Mr. Jobs, I decided to give the article a scan.

A more appropriate title might have started, "10 Facts About Steve Jobs I just learned..." There was nothing here in this list that hasn't been covered in any of the numerous books written on Jobs and Apple. Check any library.

I'm not shocked to find a fluff piece like this on a web site, but for some reason this piece drove home for me the fact that so much of the information we have to sift through is low-value filler. That so many of the headlines that grab for our attention are inaccurate, misleading, or just plain wrong.

Yet this passes for information. These are the resources we increasingly turn to to stay informed, to learn what we need to know to lead productive and meaningful lives.

The recorded experiences, knowledge, wisdom of the ages, preserved and made available through libraries for all time sits unused.

Driven by the confluence of our desire to be distracted and the need of corporations to capture our attention, the web flourishes, becoming home to an anti-library of sorts.

Our task, as librarians, is to work against this, to not only be present in this space, but to become the dominant source of information for people everywhere.

If not us, then who?

audioblog / makethetime

2011-08-05T09:49:00.001-04:00

Short update from a new spot, rearranging my time at work.

Problems creating hyperlinks to worksheets in Mac Excel 2008

2011-07-23T12:02:00.001-04:00

I recently ran into a problem using Excel 2008 for the Mac. I had created a number of links to workseets within my Excel file, and while they worked when I first created them, once I saved and reopened the document, clicking on the link would give me an error message, "Reference is not valid".

I saw that the links used the worksheet names to resolve themselves. My worksheet names included both spaces and accented characters (they were in French), and while that shouldn't be a problem for a modern application, I have enough experience with computers to know that it was worth a try.

In the end, I got it to work by removing both the spaces and accented characters from the worksheet names. So Ville de Montréal became Ville_de_Montreal. Removing only the spaces or the accented characters didn't work.

I did a bit of digging online before writing up this post, and found a few suggestions that the problem might only occur when saving your Excel files as .xlsx files, so saving them as .xls files may work as well. Others mentioned that there was a Office service pack that was supposed to have fixed this problem, and while it is altogether possible that my iMac isn't 100% up to date on office patches, I haven't had a chance to try this out. Still, I thought I would mention it for anyone who wants to fix the problem without having to change their worksheet names.

audioblog / humidity

2011-07-22T09:56:00.003-04:00

Noting the hot, humid weather, for the record.

Lack of control over stream in Google+ a problem

2011-07-15T10:14:00.002-04:00

In the settings for Google+ (profile and privacy) it says the following about what content appears in my Stream:

Anyone can share a post with you, but your stream only includes posts from people you've added to your circles. Click Incoming to see what people who aren't in your circles want to share with you.

This isn't true, since I have no-one in any circles, and yet my Stream is full of content that people have opted to share with me, content that should only appear in Incoming.

Real control over incoming content is one of the things Google+ needs to fix before I would consider it as a serious alternative to Facebook and/or Twitter.

What responsibilities are libraries neglecting?

2011-07-12T12:14:00.005-04:00

In a footnote to his post, Floppy Disks: It's too late, Jason Scott noted that efforts that library and archives are putting into preserving data on floppy disks is too late to make a significant difference:

As a footnote, a number of organizations of the library/archive type are beginning to take this seriously, but they’re really 20 years too late, so while the effort is appreciated, it’s on the level of looking at a decimated ecosystem and going “now what was all that about?”.

While I am not familiar enough with all the details to know how valid Scott's claim is, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that libraries have been late to take action to preserve the data on floppy disks and other digital media. Preservation seems to be relatively low on the priority list of most libraries, especially since fulfilling the preservation mandate would mean consuming resources (time, money, space) needed to fulfill higher priority responsibilities (i.e. service, access, etc).

Are libraries right to place a low priority on preservation? Are there other responsibilities that libraries and librarians are neglecting? I realize that it is always a case of making trade-offs and doing the best you can, but I worry that sometimes we are motivated to work on things that are new, exciting, publishable. (When was the last time someone published an article on correcting metadata records?) We place a higher priority on the needs of our communities today than the needs of our communities in the future. We are supposed to be institutions and professionals who take a long-term view on our work, but is seems that so much of our attention is focused on today.

I'd be interested in hearing from other librarians what you think of this issue, and what other areas that you think libraries are neglecting. While I'm writing this from the perspective of an academic librarian, I put the question to librarians of all sorts, as well as archivists who have also been painted by Scott with the same brush.

(I'm also interested in hearing from folks who feel that I'm totally off base with my comments on libraries neglecting preservation!)

Please feel free to post your thoughts as a comment below. Tks!

A few things I would have preferred Google work on instead of Google+

2011-07-11T15:28:00.006-04:00

Allow me to customize the toolbar that appears across thetop of all Google sites/services. All I want to be able to do is specify theorder of the links and decide which always appear and which are listed undermore.
Update iGoogle.
Update Google News.

(For the last two, I'll take almost anything at this point!)

audioblog / dodge

2011-07-06T12:40:00.004-04:00

Thoughts on justice, dealing with negative, bad news.

audioblog / subjects

2011-07-05T10:35:00.001-04:00

Thoughts on and remembrances of Canada Day.

audioblog / extremerisk

2011-06-27T09:29:00.001-04:00

Back at it after a nice long-weekend, notes on the progress of the clearout, thoughts on librarians and the hoarding of books.

audioblog / noshade

2011-06-21T15:01:00.002-04:00

First day of summer, a lack of shade, and quick thoughts on forgoing headphones.

audioblog / attention

2011-06-16T09:36:00.002-04:00

Realizing, after coming back from vacation, that I need to be more careful about how I allocate my attention.

iPad: Problems with Mail and Calendar are showstoppers

2011-06-02T09:54:00.002-04:00

There are two problems that I've encountered so far in trying to use the iPad (I'm using a work-supplied iPad 1) as a work-support device that I would classify as show-stoppers, i.e. important enough that I may abandon the iPad as a productivity tool.

Missing reply notifications. I've noticed that if I reply to an email message on the iPad, the 'replied' status isn't reflected when I go back into Outlook on my PC. The message shows up as read but there is nothing to indicate that I've replied to the message. For better or for worse, I do rely on Outlook to indicate if I've replies to something or so, so the loss of that small piece of information makes the iPad much less reliable.

Missing calendar items. From the day I started to use the iPad I found the Calendar experience less than satisfying. Appointment invitations would appear, but I couldn't access any of the details or attachments. Accepted invitations didn't always seem to take in Outlook, and sometimes invitations accepted in Outlook would remain as pending invitations on the iPad.

This morning I encountered a far more important problem in that one of the meetings that I have scheduled for this afternoon doesn't appear at all in the iPad's Calendar app! The fact that this is a *very* important meeting only highlights the risk of relying on the iPad for work. I've fiddled with the iPad and have not been able to get the calendar item to appear.

Does this make the iPad useless as a productivity tool? Not at all, since it still is somewhat effective as file viewer (although I still need to purchase the apps that allow me to access my network shares... and the Dropbox app is broken by design). But I can't rely on it for email or calendaring, and those are far more important requirements for me.

A further concern that I have is that this probably isn't a iPad problem so much as an iOS problem. I was planning on purchasing an iPod Touch to use an my portable email/calendaring tool, but now I'm worried that it will be similarly unreliable.

If you've encountered these problems or have come up with fixes or workaround, please do share your experiences here. I'll be doing some more research into these problems as well, and will report back if I uncover anything useful.

audioblog / blackout

2011-06-02T09:26:00.004-04:00

Thoughts on convocation and last night's windstorm and blackout.

audioblog / whohasthetime

2011-05-27T15:50:00.003-04:00

Starting to feel the pressure of summer deadlines, wondering where others find the time...

audioblog / feedback

2011-05-24T09:00:00.004-04:00

Start-of-the-week update, and a request for feedback on this audioblog, specifically on this 'clip' format compared to the previous 'show' format I used for Iterations.

audioblog / rainythursday

2011-05-19T10:00:00.008-04:00

Note: As this clip was recorded on Thursday, I back-dated it so that it would appear in the proper place in the timestream.

Presentations, consideration and decency

2011-05-16T09:58:00.003-04:00

The next time you are in a presentation of any sort, I would like you to keep the following in mind.

Simply this: there is a real person up there in front of you. A person who presumably has something to say that is of interest to you. A person who wants to do good by you and if you are interested in the same things as them, probably wants to meet and get to know you. A person who has probably spent a good deal of time working on and worrying about the presentation they are about to give. A person who is at least a little nervous and maybe scared and possibly outright terrified at having to give the presentation to you and your peers.

Now maybe their topic isn't the most interesting topic, and maybe they are using PowerPoint templates with too many bullet points and canned clip art, and maybe they are reading a bit too much from their slides, any maybe they move around too much or not enough, and maybe they are not speaking loudly enough or too fast or two slow. But they are up there in front of all of you and they are really trying to do a good job or at least get through it.

So do you think you could show that person the smallest amount of consideration and look at them while they are talking? Could you look up from your laptop or phone or table or notepad and try to pay attention? I mean, that isn't a screen up there. It isn't a book or a machine. It is a real person (see above).

Presentations are social events, even when only one person is talking and everyone else is listening. Just because we are not the center of attention does not mean that we should ignore the other people participating in the event. We need to start to show each other the consideration and respect we deserve.

p.s. This note is directed as much to myself as to you, gentle reader.

audioblog / ephemera

2011-05-12T15:07:00.000-04:00

audioblog / maylonging

2011-04-08T10:29:00.004-04:00

Resurrection

2011-04-07T13:39:00.004-04:00

(Continuing with my strategy of making small efforts here and there, and eventually getting back on track...)

I've decided that this blog needs a title other than my name. It makes it less awkward to cite and creates a second potential identifying label (the other being my name... I hope).

After thinking about it a bit, I decided that I would bring one of my old blog titles out of retirement. Having a few to choose from, I decided that Shoulder to the Wheel still fit the best. Meaning: to set ones self to work hard, to persist, towards your goal.

So another small step forward, but a step nonetheless.

Not a full redesign...

2011-04-05T10:32:00.000-04:00

... but a change in the look of the place. A simplification, reflecting/suggesting that you are only as good as your last post. Doing a little bit here and there with the hope of writing and sharing more in the space once I manage to get out from under this mountain of work called April.

audioblog / 20110329

2011-03-29T09:23:00.004-04:00

Apple's denies iOS home screen web apps access to iOS 4.3 performance increase

2011-03-17T18:12:00.004-04:00

It has been confirmed that web apps accessed from the home screen do not take advantage of the new JavaScript engine available in iOS 4.3, and so run slower then if they were launched from within Mobile Safara. As a result, people are concluding that Apple is doing this to intentionally cripple web apps and force people who want their apps on people's home screens to be developed as iOS native applications.

John Gruber jumps to Apple's defense, pointing out (correctly) that the webapps don't run slower on iOS 4.3, they just don't run as fast as the same app running in Mobile Safari.

According to Gruber, the real issue what web apps don't use the same JS engine as Mobile Safari is security. The new JS engine uses just-in-time compliation, which for security reasons (Gruber goes into the detaiuls) iOS 4.3 does not allow. Other other operating systems do allow this, and are less secure as a result. Apple has accepted the risk of less security on apps/pages accessed through Mobile Safari, but won't allow it for apps/pages accessed from the home screen.

I was having problems understanding why a web app that I accessed from a link or bookmark in Mobile Safari would get the full benefit of the new JS engine, which the same web app accessed from the home screen would not. Gruber answers that question.

"Web apps that are saved to the home screen do not run within Mobile Safari. They’re effectively saved as discrete apps — thin wrappers around the UIWebView control."

It seems to me that Apple could solve this problem by simply having the web app on the home screen act as a bookmark that opens the URL in Mobile Safari. That is what I thought was happening, since from my perspective, that is exactly how it behaves (as least on my iPad).

If someone knows why home screen web apps need to be treated differently, pleae do share in the comments below.

Update: Rafe Colburn has dug up a few more details, noting that it is only web apps that are launched from the home screen AND that contain special markup to run in full screen mode and suffer from this problem. If a web app opens in Mobile Safari, there is no problem. I put forward that it is still only those web apps that from a UI perspective could be confused with a typical app (i.e. those that compete with native apps) that are affected. If this bug remains unresolved, I'll take it as a clear sign that there is little benefit in many cases for deploying your app as a native app, and so Apple has decided to cripple full-screen web apps to give developers a reason to go native.

Problems opening PDFs in Firefox?

2011-03-17T15:16:00.002-04:00

A while back I figured out workarounds for opening PDFs in Chrome, based partially on my earlier experiences solving the same problems with Friefox. I wrote about it here.

I had assumed that browser vendors and/or Adobe had gotten their act together and solved this problem. This week, however, the problem returned, with several of the librarians at work not being able to open PDF from our web site.

All were using Friefox, but not the latest versions. Upgrading solved the problems in some cases, but not in others.

One workaround that works is to right-click and use Save Link As to save the PDF to your desktop, and then double-click it from there.

You can also configure Firefox to always give you the option of viewing a PDF in place or downloading it. To do this, change the following option:

Tools > Options > Applications > Content Type = Adobe Acrobat Document

Change the Action to Always Ask

I'm really surprised that this is still a problem, but there you go! If anyone has any explanations or details of this problem, please feel free to share below.

Who you share your domain with matters a lot more than it did yesterday

2011-03-10T15:39:00.001-05:00

Last month I wrote about how glad I was that Google had created a extension for Chrome that allows you to block domains from your search results. With that I was able to immediately get rid of a few pesky domains that always seem to litter my results with non-relevant material.

Now Google has made that functionality available in Google for all users, no matter which browser you are using. As a result I decided to uninstall the extension (unnecessary extensions degrade browser performance) and just rely on Google's built in filtering instead.

Aside from improving my own search results, what I like so much about this feature is that it makes it much harder for people to make money off of providing regurgitated or inaccessible information. The less pollution, the better!

However, I have been thinking of a scenario that is of some concern, especially for this blog. Blogger.com is known for hosting link farms, and these are exactly the kind of site that is likely to pollute someone's search results and make them block the domain. What that means is that because this blog shares a domain with these link farms, I do run the risk of getting blocked. Similarly, my blog (and other like it that provide far more useful information to users) might prevent people from wanting to block the domain, forcing them to live with the link farm results!

In other words, if you are in the business of sharing information, who you share your domain with suddenly matters a whole lot more then it did before!

Creating bookmarklets on the iPad

2011-03-08T14:40:00.004-05:00

It takes a bit of jumping through hoops, but it is possible to create bookmarklets in Safari on your iPad. In my case, I wanted to create a bookmarklet to bookmark the current page in Pinboard, but the method works for any bookmarklet.

On your PC*, locate the Javascript for the bookmarklet you are interested in creating. I did this by simply checking the address bookmarklet I had already created in my main browser. The address should look something like javascript:q=...;
Email the bookmarklet's JS code to yourself (the easiest way I could think of to get the JS code to the iPad in a selectable state.
On your iPad, open the email message on your iPad and copy the bookmarklet's JS code.
Still on your iPad, switch over to Safari and create a bookmark on your Bookmarks Bar. It doesn't matter which page you bookmark, we just need a bookmark that we can modify into our bookmarklet.
Edit the bookmark. You can do this by clicking on the bookmarks/history icon in Safari, navigating to the folder for the Bookmarks Bar, clicking the Edit button, and then clicking on the new bookmark you created for this purpose.
Change the name to whatever you want, and paste the bookmarket JS code into the address field.
Click Done on the keyboard, and you are done!

Now that I figured out the basic procedure, I plan on adding in my other bookmarklets that are central to my information processing routines (i.e. post to Ping.fm, post to Facebook).

I still have a bit to go before I have my iPad configuration set up so that it can be a real alternative for my information processing tasks, but I consider figuring out bookmarklets to be a big step in the right direction!

* As for Apple's talk of us entering a post-PC world, don't believe it! :)

audioblog / 20110304

2011-03-04T09:13:00.003-05:00

Getting Windows 7 laptop to connect to McGill's secure wireless network

2011-03-03T11:18:00.000-05:00

If you are using Windows 7 at McGill, you might be having problems connecting to the university's WPA wireless network.

ICS recently changed the configuration of the network that prevents Windows 7 machines from connecting properly to wpa.mcgill.ca. My experience is that my laptop would connect to the network, but I would be connected to the Internet.

The workaround, as a kind soul from ICS who I happen to be working on a project with, pointed out the workaround.

Navigate through Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Manage Wireless Networks
Right click on wpa.mcgill.ca and choose Properties
Navigate through Security > Advanced Settings
Under Specify authentication mode, choose User or computer authentication.
OK, etc...

The change has something to do with allowing your AD credentials to be properly used by wpa.mcgill.ca to authenticate against the network.

Aside: As a struggled with this problem over the past few weeks, I often used the workaround to connecting to the insecure mcgill.ca network and using the web-based login on https://wireless-login.mcgill.ca/ to authenticate. I then connected via VPN to make the connection secure.

Structure in credits for McCallum

2011-02-19T23:36:00.001-05:00

FWIW: The structure that is shown in the credits of the 1990's TV series McCallum is the Thames Barrier.

(Off topic, I know, but I find that the blog posts that folks appreciate the most are the ones where you figure something out on your own, and then share it with everyone.)

Google releases blacklist extension for Chrome

2011-02-14T20:20:00.001-05:00

My dreams have been answered! Google has released a blacklist extension for Chrome that allows you to blacklist domains and have them filtered from your search results (hattip: @pmlozeau). They've added a "block" link to their search results page to make it easy for select a site to blacklist. Google will also be aggregating all our blacklists and working the data into their search results, hopefully to identify and filter out these link farms from everyone's search results.

Of course, now the race is on for people to try to use this to game search results, knocking their competitors and anyone they don't like or agree with down results page. (I'm confident that Google has planned for this inevitable abuse of this very useful extension.)

Blacklist away!

Using -site: to filter domains from your search results

2011-02-09T11:11:00.005-05:00

This morning I found myself wishing that Google gave us the ability to filter specific domains from our search results.

There are a number of 'content farms' our there, collections of low quality content whose only purpose is to capture traffic in order to generate ad revenue. I'd like to be able to add these sites to a blacklist so that Google would automatically filter out results from these sites.

As I was thinking about this, an idea popped into my head. I know that you can use the site: operator in a Google search query to limit your results to a specific domain. I wondered if using -site: would remove that domain from the results. Sure enough, it does!

Try it:

Search query: McGill University
Search query: McGill University -site:www.mcgill.ca

It should be trivial to build a simple page that allows users to maintain a blacklist and include the necessary parameters when they search against Google. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Thoughts on the new 'Readability'

2011-02-01T09:57:00.005-05:00

The much-loved ~~bookmarklet~~ service Readability has launched a new app where users pay a monthly fee (at least 5$/month) for the ability to view pages in a readable layout and save pages for later viewing. In other words: Instapaper. Except that they have a different business model. 70% of each user's month fees is distributed to the publishers of the pages they read via the app. So if during the month of February you use the Readability app to read only pages on my blog, the folks behind Readability will send me a cheque for $3.50 at the end of the month. (Actually, they only send the cheques out twice a year) .

To collect that money, I need to register with them and claim ownership of my site. In addition, they will hold onto the money I am owed for pageviews to my site (indefinitely?) until I do get around to claiming my site. (See: Readability: Information for Publishers.)

As a publisher if I wanted to turn this into a significant revenue stream, I would need to design my site such that it encourages people to want to read my site in Readability rather than view it in place. How could I do that?

Encourage people to decide to read the content later. Write interesting titles and lead-ins to catch reader's interest, but make it too long to read at that time.
Make sure that the longer pieces are indeed worth reading. You want to make sure people come back.
Design the content pages so that they are hard to read. Aside from the bits that catch people's attention, clutter the rest of the page with... well, clutter! Break the content into many small pieces. Use the power of CSS to ensure that the bulk of your text is as difficult and unpleasant to read as possible.
Get someone to design a service that sits on top of the Readability API and autosubscribes to all your content. That way, you only have to hook the reader once, and as long as you put out a steady, not-overwhelming stream of articles, you will have a steady stream of money flowing from your readers bank account to yours!
Help/motivate your readers to become more discriminating readers. Promote the idea that it is better to read fewer, better articles then to attempt to read a lot. The fewer different content providers that your readers visit, the larger your cut of their monthly fee. If someone paying $5 pegs articles from 100 publishers in a month, each publisher gets $0.05. If that same person only pegs content from 5 publishers, you each get $1. The best way to do this is to provide really great and fulfilling content. A few articles or suggestions that address the benefits of fewer, better articles won't hurt, either.
Hope that your readers don't use the free Readability bookmarklet , Instapaper, or Stylish.

This is certainly an interesting venture, and one that I plan on keeping an eye one. No chance that I'll pay into it, however, since I already have a workflow that helps me to ensure the readability of the content I read online. If you do give the service a try, I'd be very interested in hearing about your experiences and impressions.

Making sense of the roles of the W3C and WHATWG in the development of HTML5

2011-01-30T13:13:00.002-05:00

I have to admit, I've been having a hard time wrapping my head around the recent announcement by the W3C and WHATWG regarding HTML5.

First, we had the W3C launching a new branding campaign for HTML5 which, despite the lack of supporting information, seemed like more or less a good thing.

Next, the WHATWG (i.e. the group working on HTML5) announces that they were dropping the version number from the specification and moving to a "living document" model of specification development. From here on in, the HTML specification would just be referred to as "HTML." They noted that the W3C would still be producing a snapshot of the spec and calling that HTML5.

Having read a bit more around these announcements, I think that my confusion is based in my not understanding the relationship between the W3C and WHATWG. I had assumed that the WHATWG work working on HTML 5 more or less within the structures of the W3C. It appears that while collaboration continues between the two groups, there is more separation then I originally though.

Here is how I've made sense of this: The WHATWG is working on developing the 'cutting edge' of HTML. They have organized their work around defining specific, narrow-scope features within HTML and getting them to the point where they meet the W3C's criteria for inclusion in a specification.

At some point in the near future, the W3C is going to take a collection of these features and release them in a specification that they will call HTML5. Presumably, this will happen again some time in the future, with the W3C taking point-snapshots (i.e. HTML 5.1) or waiting enough new features to warrant a full-number-snapshot (i.e. HTML6). Meanwhile, the browser developers (i.e. Microsoft, Mozilla, Apple, Google, Opera, etc) will work with the HTML specification produced by the WHATWG to implement narrow-scope features as they see fit.

Content developers for the most part will, or should, stick to the W3C specification of HTML5 as being the safe baseline to use to author their content. Some content developers may have a need to use some of the new features in the WHATWG HTML spec, and will be willing to make the additional investment in time and resources that will be required to address the risk inherent in develop and support non-standard markup. Assuming everyone keeps their heads and that both the W3C and WHATWG can untangle their communication plans, few content developers will fall into this category.

If you are a content developer, I recommend you pay attention to the specs published by the W3C. To keep a good perspective on the development of web standards, pay attention to WaSP. If you are a browser developer, or if you are interested in the cutting edge of HTML, then the WHATWG may be where you want to focus your attention.

Again, this only represents my current understanding of the situation. I'm always willing to hear other perspectives and opinions on this matter, so please feel free to share yours in the comments below.

University of Phoenix enrollment plummets

2011-01-18T15:09:00.000-05:00

Enrollment at the University of Phoenix, a 100% online university dropped 42% in the last quarter of 2010, and is expected to drop another 40% in the first quarter of 2011.

The article suggests that the drop is due to new rules that prevent for-profit universities from paying admission counselors based on the number of students they enroll. The new policy was put in place in September 2010, and since then admissions have dropped off considerably.

News of University of Phoenix's rampant success has, over the years, had many universities looking at it as a model for their own online offerings. If not a model, then at least as an indicator that online education was in great demand and was effective. As it turns out now, much of the University of Phoenix's success seems to have been due to aggressive sales.

I can't speak to the quality of the education the University of Phoenix provided, but it does seem to me that their success was at best a lot more modest the commonly believed. At the very least, hopefully this will remove "Look at the success that the University of Phoenix has had with online learning!" from the dialog that universities are having in regarding to their e-learning strategies. We need to ground our discussions and decision-making in reality, not in profit-seeking hype.

A new logo and badge system for HTML5

2011-01-18T09:14:00.102-05:00

While I haven't been spending too much time on HTML5, I was interested this morning to see the new logo that W3C has unveiled for HTML5. You can also read W3C's explanation of the logo, as well as the process and thinking behind the visual design.

What is interesting is how they have expanded the concept of the badges for web sites that validate. In addition to indicating valid HTML code, sites can specify which features of HTML5 they implement:

Unfortunately, there is very little information on exactly what each of these categories mean. There are a few short blurbs on the logo web site, but no way to drill down on each of these categories. I thought, for those that might be interested, I would pull out the keywords and link directly to the information in the HTML5 spec.

offline & storage: App Cache*, Local Storage (Web Storage?), Indexed DB, File API
device access: geo-location
connectivity / realtime: Web Sockets, Server-Sent Events
performance & integration: Web Workers, XMLHttpRequest 2
multimedia: audio*, video*
semantics: richer tags*, RDFa, microdata, microformats†
graphics, 3d & effects: SVG*, Canvas*, WebGL†, CSS3 3D
css3 / styling: CSS3, Web Open Font Format (WOFF)

* Indicates that the technology is defined in the HTML5 specification or (as is more often the case) at least discussed in the specification (i.e. more than just a link to a separate specification).

†Indicates a non-W3C resource

A few comments:

Few of the technologies gathered under the HTML5 logo umbrella are part of the HTML5 specification. Many are separate W3C specifications, and a few (microformats, WebGL) are not even managed by the W3C. It is of course normal and expected for a specification to refer to and build upon other specifications. However, I would prefer it if all of the technologies that make up the HTML5 banner campaign were actually mentioned in the HTML5 specification, if only in passing.
Missing from this list, in my opinion, are device-independence and accessibility. HTML5 is clearly an attempt to pull together a number of features that make up the web: why not include these specifically as part of the badge program?
It isn't clear to me how all of the elements that are part of the HTML5 badge program will be validated. In the past, the badge was generated based on how well your site validated using the W3C's markup validator service, and a click back would allow the user to see for themselves that the page validated. Now, you generate your badge by just checking the boxes of the features you implement. Lacking a proper validation method, the information presented by the badges is unverifiable and therefore unreliable.
The W3C's CSS3 information is poorly organized. This has nothing to do with HTML5, but I did notice this as I was digging through the W3C site to find a page to link to for the CSS3 link above. They do provide a list of the specifications that make up CSS3 (actually a list of what they are working on right now: I have no idea if these are all related to CSS3), but little effort appears to have been made to present them as a coherent whole. This snapshot document does appear to be an attempt to make sense of this tangled web of specification, but I find it falls short of the mark. My takeaway is that this information is not meant for mere mortals, and we would all be better off waiting for braver souls to sort out the mess and provide us with a coherent perspective on CSS3. (Resources like this may already exist: I haven't spent any time looking for them, though. If you know of any, please share in the comments below.)

The W3C specifications and other information linked to above is fairly dense and probably not worth the effort of figuring out. If you are interested in learning about HTML5, I recommend starting with Mark Pilgrim's Dive into HTML5 (free online and available in paper and other formats).

p.s. I'm not a big fan of how they have chosen to write HTML 5 as one word: HTML5.

Expertise is being undermined by self-interest

2011-01-06T09:40:00.001-05:00

Before the holidays I was in a workshop with a number of other faculty, and at some point the discussion turned to the perceived growing trend of people making health and wellness decisions based on ideas that have no scientific validity whatsoever.

Despite being unanimous in our disapproval of this behavior, we didn't have a chance to discuss why this was the case. Why do people ignore the expertise of scientists and other experts who are much more knowledgeable then themselves?

Part of the reason could be chalked up to combination of poor decision-making, the myth of superiority of the 'natural', and a vulnerability to advertizing. But that wouldn't be enough to explain all cases of this phenomenon.

I think that part of the reason that scientists and experts are finding that their advice and opinions carry much less weight with people is that people no longer trust them. Cases of self-interest and outright corruption, while not representative, have emerged with increasing frequency. We can no longer explicitly trust that experts are acting in our best interest, or even in the best interest of society. All too often their advice is biased towards their own well-being or that of the organization that employs them.

This morning I came across the story of the researcher Andrew Wakefield who was responsible for the research linking vaccinations with autism in children. It turns out that not only was his research flawed (no one has been able to reproduce the results, not even him), but he was both in the employ of a group suing vaccination manufacturers and also seeking to market his own alternate vaccine.

Of course, cases like this one are not representative of all scientists, researchers, or experts. Nevertheless, they do contribute to the erosion of our trust in experts. As a result, society is cut off from its best and potentially most reliable source of knowledge.

Questions to ask ourselves: Who benefits from an ignorant society? What can we do to re-establish society's trust in science and expertise in general?

Thoughts on dealing with the delicious crisis

2010-12-29T23:01:00.000-05:00

I consider myself to be a moderate user of delicious. However, I've been using the service to save my bookmarks for almost 7 years now. As a result, I have a large number of bookmarks saved and tagged in delicious. I've never been overly rigorous in my tagging, but delicious' ability to search each bookmark's title, notes, and keywords generally enabled me to easily find what I am looking for.

Almost more important than the store of bookmarks is how much delicious has been integrated into my information processing routine. Whenever I come across something I feel I might want to look at later, I would add it to delicious. Once it was in delicious, I could move on knowing I could more than likely retrieve that bookmark whenever or wherever I needed it.

Whether Yahoo is planning on closing delicious or selling it off, I think it is obvious that delicious' future is uncertain. I no longer feel it is a service that I can rely on, and while the servers seem to be running fine at the moment, at some point I will have to find another solution to my bookmarking problem. I might as well make the change now.

Finding alternatives to delicious has been surprisingly difficult. I've eliminated most online services, since for the most part I feel like I'm just repeating the mistake I made with delicious. I've played with posting bookmarks as notes to Google Reader, but haven't developed it as a habit just yet. I've also imported my delicious bookmarks into Chrome (my main browser) so that they are synced across all the machines that I use. I can also search them in Chrome, but since only the title text was imported, I've lost all the work I've done tagging these bookmarks. Better than nothing, but still...

So my solution may be somewhere between notes in Google Reader and simple bookmarks in Chrome. Easy enough. What has been hard is making either of these into a habit. As I sift through the information I come across each day, each time I hit something I want to make a note of for later use, I stumble. I remember that I can't just post it to delicious, and I'm left trying to figure out where I should save the link. The sensation only lasts for a few seconds and I eventually dump the link somewhere, but I do so without the reassuring feeling of knowing (believing?) that I will ever be able to find it again.

As I struggle with this problem, I find myself wondering if it is even worth it. I wonder if bookmarking is simply a habit developed way, way back (i.e. in the 1990s) when bookmarking links of interest was a viable way of assisting in the retrieval of information. But how often do I really go back and dig up links from these bookmarks? Of my 6800 bookmarks, how many have I ever retrieved? Could I find the same (or better) results just running the same keywords through Google? If I just stopped bookmarking links, how much of a productivity hit would I really suffer?

I should mention that most of what I bookmark is just-in-case information. By that I mean that when I bookmark a link, I usually don't have a specific use context in mind. Contrast this will keeping track of citations when working on a paper, where the objective and use is both immediate and clear. My bookmarks in delicious could disappear, and I'm not sure I would be all that put out.

In fact, the 'delicious crisis' may turn out to be an opportunity for me, a problem that requires me to revisit the basic premise of what I am trying to achieve, and maybe come up with a solution that is better suited to today's information environment. I don't have anything concrete to propose at the moment, but once I settle into something resembling a habit, I'll share the details with you here.

I'm interested in hearing how others are dealing with the delicious crisis and with bookmarks in general. Any and all comments and suggestions are welcome.

Tired of your library being littered with food and garbage? Do something about it!

2010-12-13T10:05:00.004-05:00

With the end of the semester upon us, the library is a busy place, filled with students putting in long hours writing papers and studying for exams.

Like many libraries, we are having problems keeping the place clean: students bring food into the library when they are not supposed to, bring in drinks that are not in sealed containers, and leave their garbage everywhere. The only fans of this behaviour are the mice, who have reemerged to feast on all the food left behind by the students. Once the food is gone, they will likely start in on the books.

(There is a reason why these policies are in place. We are not just trying to be difficult.)

While the cleaning staff try to stay on top of the problem, it would be far better if students could be made to understand and respect the policies in the first place.

To that end, I am calling on librarians everywhere to pull yourself away from the Internet and take a few minutes every day at different times of the day to take a stroll around your library and ensure that your policies regarding food, drink, and general proper use of the library are being respected.

If know it is difficult to confront a patron who isn't respecting your policies, but instead of thinking about the one person who will be put out because they not be able to eat their carrots or drink from an open cup, think about the 30 students sitting around them who can't get any work done because said individual is too busy crunching and slurping away. Think of the student who needs to read The donut: a Canadian history but can't because some inconsiderate soul spilled coffee all over the library's copy. Think of the student who won't go to the library any more after being surrounded by a gang of ravenous mice!!!

OK, maybe the last one it a bit farfetched, but you get the idea. As librarians, we have an obligation to current and future patrons to preserve the library's collection, facilities, and environment. It may seem very 'old school' to walk around making sure that everything is as it should be, but it needs to be done.

If you are a librarian and won't be taking part in my call to action, I would be interested in knowing why. Do you not have time to keep an eye on the library? Is reprimanding students frowned upon by your library? Is it someone else's job? Should it be someone else's job? Or do you disagree with the library's policies and refuse to enforce them as a matter of principle? Please feel free to chime in with your thoughts and opinions in the comments below.

The real costs of non-standard web development

2010-11-12T16:26:00.000-05:00

Any time you adopt a web-based application that relies on a non-standard feature of one or more browsers, you are creating a dependency between your organization and the particular version of those browser.

Many organizations have done this, assuming that the browser vendors would continue to support all non-standard features in all future releases of their product. Unfortunately, this is not what has happened, and organizations are stuck using older, less-secure browsers as a result.

For anyone who has ever advocated standards-based development, today's report from Gartner is vindication for the advice we have been giving to clients and developers for years. According to Gartner, many organizations are stuck using IE 6 because migrating even to a newer version of IE is too risky and/or expensive:

Gartner estimates that “organizations running IE6 report that up to 40% of homegrown browser applications fail to run properly with IE8. Furthermore, many ISV applications, including complex ERP and CRM applications, with lengthy and expensive migration requirements, must be remediated before IE8 can be used. Through 2014, IE8 compatibility problems will cause at least 20% of organizations to run overtime or overbudget on their Windows 7 migration projects.”

In my experience, organizations have over time understood that it is in their interest for their public-facing web sites to be standards-compliant. For internal applications, however, the philosophy has been that since they control the IT environment, they can ensure that employees are using whatever browser version is necessary to run their line-of-business web application. And while that is true, they have ignored the dependencies that they have created between their applications, their browsers, and even the operating systems deployed on their machines.

The benefits of standards (and I mean here in a general sense, not limited to IT), and the risks of not following them, are well-documented and well-understood. As is often the case, it seems that many believed (and continue to believe) that these restrictions do not apply to information technology. Experience is proving them wrong. We can only hope that organizations who make this mistake, and pay the price, will learn from it and make more responsible decisions moving forward.

We are living in a corporate dreamworld

2010-09-28T09:29:00.000-04:00

This morning I came across a story of a problem with the maps in Apple's iPhone when used in China. The problem is that the map that is displayed is the censored, showing the map data and boundaries that are claimed by the Chinese government, and not the maps that are accepted internationally as being accurate.

I decided to talk about this story here not because on its own it is especially newsworthy. That censorship exists in China not a surprise. That corporations like Apple and Google are willing to facilitate censorship in order to maximize profits it not a surprise either.

What is important about this story is that it provides another example of how this new digital world that we are becoming increasingly dependent upon, that we day by day give more meaning to, is so deeply flawed.

It is a world that is controlled by corporate interests. More and more we live our online lives in spaces created by them for their benefit. We're invited along for the attention we can bring, as a way of gaining permission to slowly siphon funds from our bank accounts to theirs, 99¢ at a time.

Everything can be censored. Everything can be tracked. Everything can be controlled.

Of course there are benefits. It is much easier to access information. It is much easier to connect and communicate with other people across space and time. We can for the most part carry out bureaucratic and consumer transactions with greater ease and convenience then before.

But as the space where many of us are choosing to focus our attention for a greater part of our lives, where we in fact are living our lives, it is still deeply flawed, and a pale facsimile or the real world around us. A world that, by the way, we are neglecting.

Librarians, Netflix, and professional ethics

2010-09-24T09:39:00.003-04:00

A few days ago I read Meredith Farkas' blog post on the Netflix/Libraries issue, and though she did a good job of putting the spotlight on librarians who engage in this illegal practice. (Let's call a spade a spade, shall we?)

Short version of the issue: Libraries are using Netflix to rent DVDs on request and in turn lend them out to patrons. This violates Netlifx Term of Service.

I haven't had the time to follow all the back and forth that has happened since then, but what seems to have emerged, as summarized by Andy* is that, librarians have decided to go ahead with using the service in this way because they can, and that Netflix in turn has decided to turn a blind eye to the behaviour, for now.

My take: Librarians who are engaging in this practice have decided to have their behavior guided by a "whatever we can get away with" philosophy, rather than supporting the intellectual property laws that are the foundation of our profession. Not only are they putting their libraries at risk legally and financially, but they are undermining our credibility as professionals.

And at the very least, abusing the Netflix service is a violation of our code of ethics, specifically: "IV. We respect intellectual property rights and advocate balance between the interests of information users and rights holders." In other professions this is the kind of thing that gets you censured or booted out.

I agree with Andy that if libraries want vendors to provide them with access to DVDs without having to purchase them, they need to lobby for a service that does just that.

* I refer to the author as Andy not out of familiarity, but because he chooses on his blog to identify himself simply as Andy.

Two tips for using WebCT at McGill

2010-09-15T21:07:00.000-04:00

I just posted a note to my class site to help make using WebCT a bit less of a hassle for my students. (WebCT is the course management software we currently use at McGill.) After posting the note, I thought that it might be a good idea to share the information here in case others might benefit from it, even though the information is fairly specific to McGill.

Keep in mind that there is nothing revolutionary in what I am about to share with you, but I know many students that have been overjoyed to learn of these tips. Its the small things...

Tip#1: Bookmark directly to WebCT. Most students access WebCT either by going through myMcGill (the student portal... and yes I am still amazed when I see people using it!) or going to the /mycourses site, logging into the site and then clicking on the link. This tip will save you at least one click.

Create a bookmark in your browser to the following URL:
https://home.mcgill.ca/global/php/webct_vista_sso.php?i=mycourses

When you click on the link you will be asked to login, after which you'll be taken to the WebCT 'switchboard' where you'll see the list of your classes to choose from.

Tip#2: Hide old classes. After your first year, the list of courses displayed in WebCT when you login can get pretty long. Worse is that that the new courses are at the bottom of the list, so you always have to scroll down. More wasted time!

At the top of the list of classes there is a heading that reads "Class listing". To the right of that is an icon of a pencil. Click on that and you'll be given the option of hiding courses from the display. You can go ahead and hide all your old courses and be left with a short and easy to use list of active courses. And of course you can always un-hide an old course if you need to go into it for some reason.

Hype is dead

2010-09-15T11:29:00.003-04:00

Every day seems to bring yet another pronouncement that "X is dead" or "Y is dead", and so rather than take any of this as real news, can we agree on a few things?

When someone claims that X is dead, what they are usually saying is that the hype around X is dead. People have enough understanding and actual experience with X that any outrageous claims about how X will revolutionize your world or be the last word in anything will now be seen for what they are: unfounded ad copy.

The message that X is dead is meant to manipulate people to let go of what they currently have and long for something else. Sure X works fine for you and you are very happy with it. But what do you know? X is dead! Get with it!

The message that X is dead is directed at the first-movers, and the folks trying to get in on the ground floor and make some money or grab some power before reality settles in.

When X dies, the easy money is gone. The easy opportunities are gone. The mercenaries are also (thankfully) gone or leaving. All that remains is hard work, but also real opportunities to do something meaningful.

Cloud friction

2010-09-06T15:38:00.001-04:00

I've been thinking about what I wrote yesterday about the friction of collaboration, and I'm not all that satisfied that is all that accurate. The friction isn't a result of collaboration, but of the relatively poor quality of Google's applications. What's more, I would guess that this problem isn't limited to Google's tools. Last time I checked, Microsoft's Office cloud offering was even worse than Google Apps.

So let's take another kick at the can:

cloud friction, n.: The productivity lost when using cloud-based applications in order to take advantage of their distinctive features (ease of collaboration, availability from any internet-connected PC, etc)

The friction of collaboration

2010-09-05T20:10:00.003-04:00

As I write this I am in the middle of creating a series of Google Spreadsheets, importing tab-delimited data so that I can share it with a group of people for them to review and comment on.

Given the resources at my disposal, there is little doubt in my mind that Google Shreadsheets is the easiest way for me to share this data with others and allow them to further enrich the data.

At the same time, I am constantly reminded that I am taking quite a performance hit in using Google Spreadsheets. This has become even more obvious to me as I create spreadsheet after spreadsheet (there are probably 20 in all, more or less the same by all with different parts of the data). Google Spreadsheets is quite pokey and flakey as far as software applications go. Slow to react to UI commands (including scrolling), sometimes even requiring that I click a menu several times before the command ‘takes’.

If I was using Excel, I’m sure I’d be done by now. As it is, I’m about half way through.

But the collaboration makes it worthwhile, which leads me to attempt to coin the following phrase:

friction of collaboration, n. The productivity lost when using Google Docs in order to take advantage of its collaborative features.
Update: I've made another attempt at coming up with a term to describe this phenomenon.

How does Apple get away with 'Ping?'

2010-09-02T12:26:00.002-04:00

When I heard that Apple was going to call its music sharing social network Ping, I wondered how they were going to get away using a name that is already in use both commonly and as a trademark.

As mentioned in this conversation, Ping.fm has been around for some time and is a service in the social networking space. Ping is also the name of a common networking utility used to test connections to other machines on the network. I'm not sure if either of these invalidates Apple's appropriation of the term, but my guess is that it all comes down to who has the better legal resources.

For example, I'm sure if I came up with an app that helped people to schedule get-togethers with their friends, and I called that app, say, Facetime, you can be pretty sure that Apple would come a-callin'.

Related news (I'll update this list if/when I come across relevant stories):

Apple inks Ping trademark deal with golf gear maker (Sept 2, 1010)

Topics from Podcamp Montreal 2010 (Preliminary Schedule)

2010-08-18T09:27:00.001-04:00

The preliminary schedule for PodCamp Montreal 2010 was published yesterday, and I thought that I would take a few minutes to do a quick topic analysis based on the titles of the talks. Here are the results:

It appears that there will be even less coverage of podcasting then in 2009, where there was almost (almost!) a full podcasting track. This year it appears that it will be even more marginalized as a topic.

I noticed that the Scarborough Dude isn't listed as one of the speakers, and I believe that he is intending on giving a talk, which would bring the count of podcasting talks to 3. It does appear, though, that if I want to attend a podcasting conference, I'm going to have to save up my pennies and get out to PAB next year.

Chances are that I will still be attending PodCamp Montreal, but I'll have to adjust my expectations accordingly.

Moving PDFs onto the iPad - Part 1

2010-07-29T09:13:00.000-04:00

One use case I am pushing on the iPad is using it to store journal articles for reading when I am offline. Having a portable library that allows me to catch up on my profession reading during my commute and during other bits of downtime would be very valuable. The iPad seems like it would be a perfect device for this, so I'm trying to see just how well I can get it to work.

The iPad has PDF viewing built in, and Apple recently added the ability to use iBooks as a PDF library. So far so good.

The workflow I am trying to support is as follows: as I come across articles during the course of the day, I'll mark them somehow so that they will be synced to the iPad. That way I can build up a library over time and it will just be there on the iPad when I want it without having to put too much extra thought into it.

How to get the PDFs onto the iPad from my PC? The basic route is to open iTunes and drop them on the iBooks icon which, I believe, is only present when the iPad is in fact plugged in. The PDFs are then transfered on the next sync. So that works, but having to open iTunes and have the iPad plugged is less then ideal.

This morning I noticed that on my PC there is a folder un my iTunes Media folder called Autocatically Add to iTunes, which it turns out does what it says: any iTunes-compatible content placed in that folder is automatically imported into iTunes. The only problem is that this features does not consider PDFs to be iTunes-compatible content, so it won't import them. So close!

For now, I'm stuck with dropping PDFs onto iTunes. Not the end of the world, but I'm sure I can do better. I am sure there are apps out there that will facilitate this. I'm not giving up yet, and I'll be sure to share what I learn.

(For the record, I think that the next iPod Touch is likely to be a better device to host my personal library, as the iPad is too bulky for my liking.)

Web Services Librarian, Week 1

2010-07-26T08:47:00.000-04:00

I thought I would start off my second week at my new job by giving you a short summary of my first week.

Last week could be summed up with one word: meetings. I spent more then half of last week in meetings, most of which were scheduled before I began. From the beginning, however, I realized that this was a good thing.

Most of the meetings I had were true meetings in the sense of the word: as part of my orientation I met with most of the people in my department to learn about just what it is that they do. While it does take a bit more time then a 2 minute introduction at a team meeting, I found it quite helpful to get a bit more detail about each person's work. It helped me to get to know some of the people and get a sense of what they are like as people. Reflecting on the experience now, I also feel that it helped me to get a sense of the department, and to feel like a part of the team. As an orientation activity, I felt that it was time well invested, and I'm grateful to everyone who took time out of their schedules to meet with me. (And it isn't over yet: I have more of these meeting in the coming week or two, as people get back from vacation, etc!)

As far as my setup goes, well, I no longer have my own office, let alone a private porch where I can open the windows and let in the cool, summer air! But that's ok, and not a surprise. I'm sharing an office space with one of my team members, which works fine for me. I also expect that I'll be out of my office quite a bit visiting the various libraries around campus and meeting with people. I am a bit concerned about a lack of meeting space, but I'm sure I'll figure that out as well.

Computer-wise, I've been issued a old Thinkpad X60s laptop until my new machine arrives. It feels good to be back on a Thinkpad, even if this one is a bit underpowered… and running Windows XP to boot! But it was ready for my Monday AM when I got in, and I was able to get up and running right away. Thumbs up.

Even though it was my first week, I wanted to be able to get to work right away, to get my head around the tasks before me and dive right in. I'm glad to say that I was able to do just that. By the end of the day Monday I had a good sense of what my priorities are (i.e. getting everything ready for the start of the Fall semester) and what specific projects need to be undertaken (a list too long to cover here). I met with my team, got access to the various systems, and started to learn how things work. I also took over fielding the incoming requests and made several updates to the web site.

My goal for my first week was to orient myself to my new role and responsibilities, and I feel that I've accomplished that. What's more, by being productive I feel like I was able to make a real contribution and assume my role within the team.

I'm ready for week #2!

Library Routes

2010-07-15T22:32:00.000-04:00

After coming across Alex's contribution to the Library Routes wiki, I thought I would write up my own brief path to librarianship.

I came to librarianship somewhat late in my professional career. After graduating from McGill with a BSc (Physics) in 1992, I followed a career path that started in retail (selling computers at Bureau en Gros/Staples) and continued on to technical writing for ERP software companies and eventually to web development.

In 2001 I returned to academia as a faculty lecturer at the Centre for Continuing Education at McGill. Having only a BSc, it was recommended that I start working towards a Master's degree. Remembering that Morville and Rosenfeld, authors of the polar bear book, were both originally librarians. That lead me to the MLIS program offer at what was is today called the School of Information Studies. I worked on my MLIS degree part-time while teaching full-time at the Centre, and graduated in 2006 (along side the wonderful woman who I share my life with: yes, a family of librarians!).

Soon after graduation, we moved to Ottawa, where I worked at Carleton University in the communication department, managing the university's web site. After that contract I moved on to Community Foundations of Canada, where I started as their IT manager and eventually became their director of knowledge management.

In 2008, we moved back to Montreal so that I could take up a position at McGill's School of Information studies. I worked there for two years as a professional associate, teaching courses in web development and knowledge management. My work as SIS is formally ending this week, and on Monday I start a new position as an Assistant Librarian at the McGill Library, where I will be responsible for the library's web site, etc.

So it has been a somewhat winding road to get to where I am today. Technically, I still am not a librarian, and won't be until Monday at around 9am! And while I didn't initially set out to become a librarian, I have to say that for the first time in a long time, I feel like I have found my calling.

Changes

2010-06-18T11:13:00.000-04:00

I realize that I haven't been very present here on this blog for the past few months, due mostly to my workload but also to another issue that required or at least consumed much of my attention. That issue has as of recently been resolved, and since news broke at work yesterday, I can now share the news will you all as well.

This week I resigned from my position as professional associate here at McGill's School of Information Studies. My decision to do so was based primarily on another opportunity that came my way, one that being together so much of my educational and work experience. Next month (July 19th to be precise), I'll be joining the McGill Library as their Web Services Librarian, where I will be responsible for, among (many) other things, the library's web site.

As this is an academic, tenure-track appointment, you can be sure that I'll be allocating more time to sharing my ideas and insights with the community, both through the typical academic channels (articles, lectures and presentations) but through this blog as well.

While I'm sad to be leaving SIS, I'm very excited about the future... and especially about finally being able to call myself a librarian!

Putting the people before the technology

2010-05-18T15:40:00.000-04:00

O'Reilly Radar has published an interesting interview with Michael Edson, the Smithsonian's director of web and new media strategy. Aside from discussing the role new media is playing in the museum, Edson offers up this

"This is a thought experiment, I know, and a hypothetical question. But I might take those donated iPads and sell them on the open market and use that money to buy a thousand Flip cameras and give them to every curator and intern and web person we have. Our visitors tell us they want access to the pictures and the videos, but they also want to connect with Smithsonian experts, the person who's been studying asteroids for 35 years and can tell you the history of the universe in five minutes. Unlocking those person-to-person connections is how things start to get exciting."

In other words, it is more important for Edson to give his people more tools to create content then it is to give his patrons tools for consuming content. While this doesn't apply to every situation, what I think it noteworthy and commendable is Edson's deep understanding of what is important for the mission of his organization, how he relates what patrons are looking for and then seeks out technology that can make that happen. Dumping iPads into the hands of visitors may be trendy, but there the thinking starts from the technology and not the people or what they need, and so as a strategy is very likely to be ineffective. Thankfully for the Smithsonian, Edson understands this.

Worse-case thinking

2010-05-13T10:12:00.001-04:00

This morning I came across this post by Bruce Schneier on worse-case thinking:

An extension of theprecautionary principle, [worse-case thinking] involves imagining the worst possible outcome and then acting as if it were a certainty. It substitutes imagination for thinking, speculation for risk analysis and fear for reason. It fosters powerlessness and vulnerability and magnifies social paralysis. And it makes us more vulnerable to the effects of terrorism.

I myself am certainly guilty of this, although I had never heard it described explicitly in this way. Not specifically with respect to security (where I think my point of view is somewhat balanced), but with change in general. It is a perspective that I've been trying to shift away from, albeit with limited success. I'm hoping that now that I've had the phenomenon articulated for me, I'll do a better job of recognizing this thinking in myself, and adjusting my thinking and my behaviour accordingly.

When your 'friends' become a risk

2010-04-25T14:31:00.001-04:00

I recently wrote about how Facebook has changed how they handle personal information, specifically, how that information now gets shared with third-party web sites, and the risks that entails. Based on some of the reaction and feedback that I've been seeing in my own network, I'm beginning to think that Facebook has made a major misstep with this privacy rollback, one that could have strong repercussions if the trends I am noticing picks up any momentum.

Facebook's rollout of Instant Personalization (FB-IP for short) is actually more a collection of errors, from the default opt-in to the unscalable opt-out process. But the biggest mistake might turn out to be that they have introduced the idea that your 'friends' can be a risk to your privacy.

If one of your friends visits a site that makes use of FB-IP, and they have not disabled FB-IP, your public personal data (Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages you have liked/fan'd) will be shared with that site. There is a way for you to prevent this, but it requires you to constantly block new sites individually as they implement FB-IP. OK for now when there is only three of them, but if this takes off, it will be hard to keep up.

Regardless. What I've noticed is that several of my contacts have been talking about going through their list of friends and culling the list. The criteria they will use to removing folks isn't consistent: people from their far past, people who are unpleasant, people they do not want to be connected to. The word 'defriending spree' has been uttered a few times. The thought has crossed my mind as well.

The change here is that friending someone is no longer an "all upside" proposition. Before you collected friends like it was a bit of a game to see who had the most. You most probably avoided the undesirable people from your present (or your past), but everyone else got added in. Why not? There was nothing to loose.

But now those connection might can cause you a problem. These connections become attack vectors against your personal information. Your connection to that person can be used by people and organizations you have no knowledge of or relationship with to mine your personal data. Granted it is (for now) only your public personal data, data anyone can access by doing a manual search on Facebook.com. But now it is automated, which makes certain abuse scenarios far more likely.

Also, none of the data used to be public. But Facebook, in order to deliver a better user experience, has gradually made more and more of this data public, and has removed the controls that used to be in place that allowed you to keep this information private (suggesting that this new openness really isn't in our best interest after all).

Going forward, we can all expect our social networks and our social graphs to be mined by Facebook and others to get our attention and/or our money. Those of us who use Facebook have, so far, trusted Facebook with our personal information. But that trust should be conditional on Facebook's continuing to respect our right to privacy and to control how our personal data is used.

Furthermore, by opening up to third-parties and by making it hard or impossible for us to keep our data private, Facebook has put itself in a position where it will be held responsible for anything that goes wrong in this arrangement. Not in a legal sense necessarily, but users who get burned by some third-party site will most likely blame Facebook before they blame that site or themselves.

If you are like me, you use Facebook because you derive a certain benefit from this social network: it helps you to get and keep in touch with people that matter to you, to share what is going on in your life and learn about what is going on in theirs. Personally I was quite comfortable with my data being mined by Facebook to display targeted ads on the site (and given what I saw, was fairly certain that they had no idea who I really was anyway). This latest move on their part was a bit of a pain to deal with, but not enough to get me to wipe my account. But it won't surprise me if one day they get the mix wrong enough to make it no longer tolerable, for me and for others.

Opting-out of Facebook's new Instant Personalization feature

2010-04-22T15:53:00.001-04:00

Depending on how concerned you are about your privacy, you might want to take a few moments to opt-out of Facebook's new Instant Personalization features.

Bobbi Newman over at Librarian By Day does an excellent job of explaining how to do this, so I won't repeat those details here. However, I did want to see if I could clarify exactly what information is at risk here.

There are currently 3 sites that offer Instant Personalization:

Microsoft Docs.com (google docs competitor)
Pandora (Internet radio)
Yelp (recommendations)

When you go to these sites, the following information is transmitted automatically from Facebook (assuming you are logged in)

Name
Profile Picture
Gender
Current City
Networks
Friend List
Pages

This information is already *public* on Facebook, BTW. They are just making it possible for these third-party sites to access that info in a reliable and automated way.

If you don't want this to happen, you can go into your privacy settings in FB and opt-out of instant personalization. (details in the articles linked to at the bottom)

You are not done yet. It so happens that if one of your *friends* goes to one of these sites and they haven't opted out of instant personalization, the profile information listed above could still be transmitted to support *their* personalization of the site.

If you don't want this to happen, you have to go in and individually block each of the sites. A hassle when there are only 3, but impossible to keep on top of unless you will be notified each time FB adds another site to this list. And who wants that, anyway.

As I said before, FB already makes all this information public to anyone who cares to search the site. With instant personalization, they are just automating the processin an attempt to provide value to their users. Where they are failing, IMHO, is in having opt-in be the default.

If Facebook felt that this feature was truely valuable to *users*, and that people would be fine sharing this information in this way, they would make it a simple opt-in. That they didn't speaks volume about the motivation behind this functionality, and who really stands to benefit.

Facebook proposing multiple changes to privacy, user rights

2010-03-26T18:29:00.004-04:00

Facebook is preparing to roll out another set of changes to its privacy policy and statement of user rights. They have posted revision-marked versions of both documents, which is of course commendable. And also educational.

I was alerted to these proposed changes through a news item claiming that Facebook was about to start sharing your data with third-party web sites without your approval, and that while you could opt-out, this feature would be "on" by default. The tried this with Facebook Connect, and it backfired. It looks like they are going to try again, but this time with a more open change process. That doesn't make it a good idea.

I dug into the proposed privacy policy, and found a few more details. First, what is a pre-approved web site?

Prior to allowing them to access any information about you, we require [the web site] to agree to terms that limit their use of your information (which you can read about in Section 9 of our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities) and we use technical measures to ensure that they only obtain authorized information.

So: it could be anyone.

What will be shared with these pre-approved web sites?

In order to provide you with useful social experiences off of Facebook, we occasionally need to provide General Information about you to pre-approved third-party websites and applications [...] at the time you visit them (if you are still logged in to Facebook).

It gets better:

Similarly, when one of your friends visits a pre-approved website, it will receive general information about you so you and your friend can be connected on that website as well (if you also have an account with that web site).

In other words, general information about me (not sure what that includes) including my relationship with someone can be provided to a third-party without me having to go to that site. Personally, I'm not comfortable with knowledge of that connection being available to everyone, nor am I comfortable with my 'friends' being alerted to the fact that I have an account on a particular web site.

Some people will like this functionality, which is fine, but Facebook should do the right thing and have everyone opted-out by default, and allowing those who are interested to opt-in. If there is such a great upside for us users, then surely we will all flock to it en-masse!

The dangers of headline scanning

2010-03-22T11:20:00.006-04:00

After seeing several headlines over the past few days, the most recent this morning on CBC News, about Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe having compared the separatist movement to resistance fighters that fought against the Nazis, I decided to take a look into it to see if I could find his actual words.

According to the CBC web site, the news headline is now, Sovereigntists are resisters: Duceppe, with no mention of WWII or Nazis. The story quotes him as saying the following:

"For the moment, we are resisters. But yesterday's resisters will be tomorrow's winners. Long live a sovereign Quebec!"

Here's more of his speech as it was delivered:

«Demandez à n'importe quel parti qui gagne six majorités consécutives s'il est prêt à considérer cela comme un échec. J'en connais qui en sont jaloux à Ottawa. Cela démontre que les fédéralistes n'ont strictement rien à offrir aux Québécois et que les Québécois ne se reconnaissent pas en eux. Maintenant, on est sur le plan de la résistance et de la défense des intérêts du Québec», a-t-il expliqué.

[...]

«Pour le moment, nous sommes des résistants. Mais les résistants d'hier seront les vainqueurs de demain. Vive le Québec souverain!

So where is the spin coming from? Back to the CBC news item:

[Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon] said he also hopes Duceppe isn't trying to equate the federal government to Nazi German rule.

Reading through the comments on the CBC news item (I know, bad idea) shows that the government spin has been more or less successful, with the typical froth and venom being spewed about.

I'm as guity of headline scanning myself. Often I'll catch myself saying something along the lines of, "Oh, I think I saw a news items on that" and when asked for details, I shrug my shoulders, not really knowing what the news item said beyond the headline.

I really should know better, and this latest fiasco with CBC News has I think driven home the point for me: I can't trust the headlines. I probably can't trust the news as much as I would like to, but assuming that the headlines contain accurate information is a mistake, and one I am going to have to try to avoid making in the future.

I expect that this will be somewhat hard to do, however, since headline scanning is such a large part of my information filtering process. Somehow, I'm going to have to learn that the headline only contains information about the news story, that is, it gives me some idea of what the news story is about. However, I cannot trust the headline to contain any information about what really happened. The headline is nothing more then a hint at the real story, twisted by spin, amplified to get my attention, but not something to take seriously on its own.

Update (March 22, 2010 at ~6 pm): CBC News is running a new item titled, Duceppe's 'resistance' comments draw fire, where the first sentence reads, "Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe is standing by his remarks likening sovereigntists to Second World War resistance movements," which is incorrect. He remarked that sovereigntists were a resistance movement, but is was the federal government that linked his comments to WWII resistance movements (see above). Given the fact that this issue was more clearly covered in CBC News' own previous reporting, this clearly demonstrates a lack of reporting competence on their part.

Not to be outdone in taking advantage of this manufactured brouhaha, Ignatieff decided to follow suit:

"Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff accused Duceppe of "engaging in … weird historical comparisons," because he had nothing to say. "I've met French resistance fighters. This would be an insult if we took … [Duceppe] seriously," Ignatieff said.

I understand that this is all part of the political game, and it would not surprise me if Duceppe was entirely aware of the effect his choice of words would have... if they took the bait. And they did.

On the challenges facing universities

2010-03-15T12:00:00.000-04:00

The world is ever-changing, so what we need to know in the future is different from what we needed to know in the past. How we will learn in the future is also different from how we learned in the past.

Universities need to change in order to prepare students to participate fully and effectively in the future.

The learning objectives and outcomes must be based on our understanding of what knowledge students will need to possess in order to be effective participants in society when they graduate.

Universities should consider the the capabilities of the students entering university in order to design effective learning experiences. Student capabilities should not be a factor in determining learning outcomes.

Universities must set their entrance requirements such that it is possible for students to meet the learning objectives after the multi-year learning experience offered by the university.

If it is not possible for the university to design a multi-year learning experience that ensures that students have met the necessary learning objectives, then we have a problem.

New Google Reader UI fails in many ways

2010-03-11T04:48:00.000-05:00

Just tried the new Google Reader UI, and I'm fairly certain now that Google doesn't test new features before releasing them. I'm giving it a thumbs down.

(Note: Google isn't pitching this as a replacement UI for Google Reader, just a poorly implemented alternative.)

The default view is "All items" which generates an error message that i don't have any recommended items. Problem 1: "all items" is not supposed to show recommended items, but rather items from *MY* feeds. In the old Google Reader UI, I have 23 new items, but I can't access these in the new UI no matter what I try. That makes it useless as a news reader.

Also, grey text on a black background does not make for a better reading experience, which should be a top priority, given the name of the product. Note to Google Reader team: please see Readability bookmarklet for ideas on how to improve reading experience.

Given that the only thing it seems to do well is display pictures and videos that I have no control over, maybe they should rename this Google TV.

The importance of metrics to libraries

2010-03-10T05:25:00.000-05:00

For aspiring librarians who might still be wondering whether management matters, or whether all that data gathering, reporting, and other business-like activity has any purpose, here is an example of how critical these numbers can be to a library.

I came across an article this morning (via the always useful ResourceShelf) that describes some of the metrics that the Boston Public Library will be using to determine which branches will be closed. A few excerpts:

Library administrators will rank the 26 neighborhood branches by foot traffic, computer use, and how many Web surfers use laptops to log on to Wi-Fi networks. They will count how many programs are offered at each location and tally the number of people who attend storytime and English classes.

The library will quantify details about each of its buildings, noting energy efficiency, handicapped accessibility, and whether the wiring could support more computers. Administrators will examine how close each location is to another neighborhood branch and the distance to one of the system’s nine lead libraries, such as the 20,000-plus square-foot facilities in Dudley Square and on Centre Street in West Roxbury. They will scrutinize proximity to buses and subways and take into account other resources in the neighborhood, such as community centers, schools, or Boys and Girls Clubs.

It isn't clear whether these metrics are long-established measures of success, or if they were adopted recently in order to assist the decision-making process around the branch closures. In an ideal world, the metrics are known to branch managers and staff, allowing them to work towards achieving what target-levels are set for them.

One might (and should) question the quality of service that would result from, for example, trying to maximize the number of people making use of the library's wi-fi. If the metrics are well chosen, however, all facets of the library experience would be represented, preventing staff from trying to optimize one metric at the cost of another. Sure you can fill the library with people using laptops, but if it creates an environment that no longer feels welcoming to children or seniors and their visits drop off, you won't be any further ahead.

What is unfortunate about the approach being taken by the Boston Public Library is that it appears that they have already decided to close a number of branches, and now they are using a system of metrics to determine which will go. It isn't enough for a library to offer good or great service: they have to be better than the other libraries in order to survive the cuts. As mentioned in the article, this can only pitch branch against branch in a competition for survival. I wouldn't blame anyone who makes it through this mess (or anyone reading about it) to take the lesson to heart and operate in full competition with the other branches.

This is not the kind of environment library students might envision when they think about working in a library, but it is the reality for most libraries, and not only in the public space. Academic libraries and specialized libraries deal with the same pressures and work in similar organizational contexts, ones that see them having to quantify their performance and compete for resources. Library students approach the field with a passion (ok, maybe passion is a bit too strong a word to use here... let's say they believe in the value of libraries and librarians) for the work, which is important. But they cannot take it for granted that everyone shares their innate sense of the value and importance of libraries, and they will need to work tirelessly at justifying their existence to both their funding agencies as well as their patrons.

We need a news cooling period

2010-02-21T17:13:00.000-05:00

You may have heard the story of the recent hoax announcing the death of singer Gordon Lightfoot. Someone called a friend of Lightfoot's claiming to be his grandson and passing on the news that Lightfoot had died. From there, the friend, a trustworthy source, passed the news on to his wife, who told others... eventually the story ended up in major news papers and news services. For the full details and links to the coverage and after coverage, head over to Steve Faguy's blog.

Hoaxes of this sort seems to be occurring with greater frequency. In a race to get our attention, news media have decided to cut corners on fact-checking to get the story in front of us. Ad revenue is what counts here, not the truth of what they are reporting.

What this means is that we shouldn't be trusting *any* breaking news coming out of the major media outlets. We probably shouldn't trust any breaking news whatsoever. In today's networked world, most stories take a day or so to be validated by the network of blogs, twitter posts, comments, etc, so maybe we need to give all breaking news a day or so to cool off, to gel into something resembling accurate information.

For example, if this is the first you heard of the Lightfoot story, after a day or so the only news item you could find would be focused on the hoax. If you searched, you'd probably come across blog posts like Faguy's setting the reocrd straight.

This may seem trivial to those of us who spend a large part of each day sifting through posts, feeds, and news. We have learned, probably the hard way, to be skeptical of most information. We have developed trust networks based on our experiences, people and organizations that we trust to provide us with accurate information. I know that my network still contains several newspapers and major media sources.

So this is if anything a note to myself: take what you read on the major media sites with a grain of salt. Research the stories of interest and give the news some time to cool in order to get a more accurate version of the story.

What I'm looking for in a panel

2010-01-29T08:46:00.000-05:00

The recent launch of the Apple iPad has me thinking a bit more about the form factor in general, and what exactly I would like to see in such a device.

Let me start by saying that I think the iPad is a very good design for what it was intended to do/be, and that it seems that most of the complaints around the iPad stem from a mismatch of certain people's wants/needs with Apple's intentions for the device. Such are the risks of using secrecy and leveraging people's hope and dreams, of stirring their unmet desired to sell your hardware. But I digress...

While I don't see myself purchasing an iPad, I do hope that it succeeds in creating a market for panels, because I really could use one.

My needs, though, are different from the one's Apple is trying to meet. They are, roughly:

The panel should display my files, specifically files related to my work. It needs to be simple like Dropbox, automatically and effortlessly syncing with file store(s) of my choosing. It needs to be able to handle text, MS Office documents, PDF documents, images, video, etc, and handle them all well.

The panel should allow me to load ebooks from a variety of sources, using standard, open, DRM-free formats.

The panel should allow me to browse the web.

The panel should allow me to handle my email (multiple accounts, including Exchange email and gmail).

I'd much prefer handwriting recognition over an on-screen keyboard.

The panel should have a headphone jack.

I don’t need a built in camera or phone.

Dreaming: the panel would have a video-out (to standard VGA via an adapter if necessary) so that I could use it to drive any of the projectors on campus.

Essentially, I need a work-oriented panel to bring with me around campus to meetings and to class, and to read on the train during my daily commute.

My guess is that that panel will be based either on Android or Windows, since I don't think this is the game Apple is trying to get into. Of course, it could be that such a device will never materialize (I'm still looking for an inexpensive mobile phone that is only a good phone). But if the iPad takes off, even modestly, we should see a few vendors coming up with offerings in this space.

Wordpress.com linkjacking

2010-01-28T06:11:00.000-05:00

I came across this worrisome post this morning describing how blogs on Wordpress.com sometimes have their links rewritten for advertising purposes. From what I understand, the links still go to their intended destination, but the action is captured and mined for valuable information.

This clearly isn't the end of the world. I knew when setting this blog up on Wordpress.com that going with the free option meant running the risk of occasional ads showing up on my site. Rewriting links, though, seems more underhanded, a more direct use of my content to enhance Automattic's data mining efforts.

To get rid of the problem, I can pay $30 USD/year to get rid of all ads on the site. I'm not sure it is worth it: probably not, at least at this point.

What I do know, however, is that I feel a little less happy about having moved by blog to Wordpress.com. For whatever that's worth.

Clickers: Canaries in the coal mines

2010-01-11T09:49:00.000-05:00

Having a spare moment, I decided for whatever reason to see what had been written about the use of 'clickers' in the classroom. Quite a bit, as it turns out, but most seems to focus on how to use them effectively, with little discussion about how they should be used at all.

I find that Leslie M-B's post on the subject gives a balanced summary of the issue, so I'll point you there if you want to get the gist of what is going on.

From what I can tell, the only place where I can see clickers being of use is in very large classes where any kind of interpersonal interaction is impossible. I'm referring to classes of 100+ students. According to the Globe, the average number of students in a first-year class at McGill is 243, which is above the average across Canadian universities (194).

243, 194... it's all insane.

The adoptions of clickers is a symptom of overcrowded classrooms.

Overcrowded classrooms are a symptom of problems with the economics of the university.

Universities are not allocating sufficient physical (classrooms, etc) and human (teachers) resources (i.e. classrooms and teachers, esp teachers) to teach the volume of students attending university. Why? I'll simplify (if only because I don't have time to investigate the details) and suggest that universities don't have the money to provide these resources.

Universities, at least here in Quebec, receive funding in part based on the number of students attending. They should be able to acquire additional resources to meet the demand, at least on paper. Why not? Possible explanations:

Funds recieved are sufficenct to cover incremental costs (ex hiring teachers), but do not allow for larger investments (i.e. new buildings, etc).

Funds recieved are insufficient to meet need

Funds recieved are not allocated to support teaching

I suspect that reality is some combination of these three factors.

This is what I think of every time I hear someone talking about clickers. In my opinion, trying to come up with ways to use clickers in the classroom is akin to rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. We should instead be focusing on the fundamental problem, rather then accepting the cramming of a few hundred students into a classroom as the norm, and coming up with ways to make it tolerable.

Billable hours still require efficiency, effectiveness

2009-12-04T08:48:00.000-05:00

V Mary Abraham has written about one of the challenges of being a librarian in a law firm. In an environment where time spent looking up information is billable, what is the benefit of a librarian that reduces the amount of time spent looking for information, and in doing so, reduces billable hours.

Abraham rejects this analysis, as do it. It reminds me of one a similar dynamic that exists in software companies that charge for support: what incentive does a software company have to produce software that works well, that has few defects, and is easy to use when they make money off of training and support?

I encourage you to read Abraham's response to this challenge, and I would add that in addition to the personal interests and motivations of the people involved, these kinds of practices (i.e. working inefficiently to generate billable hours) will in the end only damage the organization's brand, their customer relationships, and their overall reputation.

Software companies at least have the benefit of a certain degree of lock-in, making it difficult for customers to switch to another provider. I don't know much about how law firms operate, but my guess is that a customer who grew tired of paying high bills for lawers looking up information would have an easier time switching to another firm.

A law librarian can therefore become a key strategic asset to a firm, enabling them to provide excellent, fairly-priced service to its clients. Efficient staff will be able to handle more work from more clients, allowing the law firm to grow and establish itself as a top-tier firm. The end result is not only a more stable customer base, but, you guessed it, more billable hours.

Research libraries facing tough times in the years ahead

2009-11-24T06:18:00.000-05:00

Chronicle of Higher Ed: Libraries Innovate to Counter Cuts

Few of the [Association of Research Libraries'] members hold out much hope that the outlook will improve anytime soon. "There's already an expectation expressed that there will be more cuts during the current fiscal year, and a high expectation that they'll continue into 2010-11. That's scary," says Mr. Lowry. "Maybe things will turn around, but right now the outlook is extremely pessimistic."

Frankly, despite the headline, I don't as see much innovation going on as librarians making do with less. Most of the article is along the same lines as the quote above, describing a rather dark situation for research libraries. Budgets are being cut, librarian positions being cut, empty positions left unfilled, with less money for collection development.

To deal with the collection development problem, libraries are shifting their perspective from individual collections to consortium collections. In other words, as long as one of the libraries in your consortium has a copy of the book, and you can get that book through ILL in a reasonable time frame, you don't need to purchase the book for your library.

I think this renewed focus on collection development is a good thing. The problem is that you need librarians for it to work, and probably more then libraries have now.

Libraries can no longer rely on standing orders to fill their orders. Instead, they need to be much more thoughtful about how they spend their money. They need to think about what goes into the collection, what should be taken out, what can be called from other libraries on a just-in-time basis. You need librarians to be working closely with faculty to determine collection development policies and to purchase materials accordingly.

However, staffing budgets are being frozen and more likely cut during the very time when these librarians are needed. As a result, I believe that research library collections and services across the board are going to suffer. People will point to 'the current economic climate' as an excuse, but that won't stop the damage being done. The greater risk is that people will take this new level of 'service' as being good enough, and budgets will never be readjusted to meet actual needs.

I commend all librarians who are working in reasearch libraries and libraries everywhere during this tough time. But to label what is happening as 'innovating' is to put a positive spin on an untenable situation. These librarians are not innovating: they are simply doing the best they can to continue deliver some level of service to their communities.

Updated thoughts on ASKP

2009-11-19T07:18:00.000-05:00

I've posted an updated version of my earlier thoughts on the proposed name for the SLA over on the SLA Alignment Portal: Association of Strategic Knowledge Professionals is a poor choice of name.

If you are an SLA member and would like to share your opinion on the proposed name, I recommend heading over to the SLA Alignment Portal, creating an account, and posting your thoughts on the site.

Elaine Toms @ SIS

2009-11-05T08:14:00.000-05:00

Last Friday afternoon I attended a talk by Elaine Toms titled Integrating Information Search into the Workflow Process.

Most search engines and information retrieval interfaces focus on helping the user to retrieve information from whatever collection they index. Attempts to improve these tools tend to focus on improving search algorithms or interface elements for specifying search queries, refining results, etc.

According to Toms, we need to broaden our perspective beyond the task of retrieving information and consider the larger task in which this search task is being conducted. For example, when students are looking up information, their broader tasks is often to write a paper for one of their courses. To support this UI designers need to understand the process of writing a paper, and design a search tool that supports that broader task (i.e. helping them to outline, to gather resources under topics and subtopics, to cite works, etc). Toms and her fellow researchers have started to look at this problem and have designed a prototype interface that they have been using to test supporting information retrieval from Wikipedia.

I'm still on the fence as to whether is the best approach to designing information retrieval interfaces. It isn't surprising that most IR interfaces are designed to support the specific task of searching and not the broader task. This allows the search tool to be used in the widest number of contexts without having to develop and maintain different interfaces for different tasks.

At the same time, there is a real value to providing search tools tailored to a specific task. The example I thought of during the talk was screenwriting software. These are essentially word processors that have been designed to support the process of writing a screenplay. As opposed trying to improve upon the generic word processor (ex MS Word), the developers of these applications decided to add features that help the writer create documents that meet the specific format and structural needs of screenplays. The software doesn't help the person create a great screenplay, but it does take care of the technical aspects of the writing, allowing the writer to focus their energies on the content itself.

The task-support interfaces being contemplated by Toms et al. run along similar lines. Understand the broader task that the user is trying to accomplish, then provide them with an excellent IR interface embedded in a toolset that helps them to retrieve and process information towards the ultimate goal of completing their broader task.

Even if we are not able to provide users with software that support their information-related tasks, the understanding this research will bring about can surely be used to improve the resources, services,and training provided by librarians to their clientele.

Response to proposed SLA name change

2009-10-15T08:13:00.000-04:00

Yesterday the SLA announced that the proposed new name for the SLA is Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals (ASKPro). There was some real member activity on the sla-dite mailing list this morning, so I thought I would take the time to write up my thoughts to add to the conversation. Below is the text of my contribution:

I have to say that when I read the editorial by Janice Lachance in the latest Information Outlook comparing promoting the association with selling fabric softener, I was worried. Now I see that I had every reason to be.

While I agree that the name change is necessary, and that it should not include references to librar* terms, Association of Strategic Knowledge Professionals is a poor choice for naming the association.

It is clear that the the terms were chosen (1) to use terms that test positively with decision-makers, and (2) form a nifty acronym. In other words, it was chosen to promote the SLA and the work of information professionals, and not to represent the membership.

"Strategic" appears to have been included to suggest value, but you can't promote something as valuable by simply slapping a label on it (unless you are selling fabric softener). In our case, you need to demonstrate how the activities of information professionals contribute to the attainment of organization objectives. You need to demonstrate it effectively and repeatedly, and you need to consistently link that performance to whatever name you choose to call yourself. Simply including "strategic" in the association name is unlikely to improve the recognition of information professionals. What is more likely is that it will suggest to decision-makers that information professionals in fact have a rather misguided understanding of how branding works.

I can understand wanting to include "knowledge" in the name. "Information" isn't seen to have much value to organizations. Despite having access to an abundance of information, they appear to be unable to derive much value from it. Just as data managers moved up the ladder to become information managers, we often see a movement from information up to knowledge. However, the fact remains that by and large what we work with is information. Yes, all librarians need to understand the role information plays in the creation, sharing, acquisition, and application of knowledge, but that does not make us knowledge professionals. That understanding is critical do providing information services to our clientele, but it does not define our area of expertise. We are information professionals, and there is nothing wrong with that! "Knowledge" as a concept is already overused and misused to such an extent that its effectiveness as a promotional tool is quite limited. It might have been effective a decade ago, but these days is more likely to be greeted with a raised, sceptical eyebrow than anything else.

As an acronym, ASKPro suggests a reference service or product, but not a professional association. It also suggests an association with libraries and librarians, something I though the SLA wants to move away from.

Association of Strategic Knowledge Professionals isn't likely to mean much to business and industry. As a branding effort it is too transparent to be effective and it likely to be more of a detriment to the association's alignment activities.

It is also questionable whether "strategic knowledge professional" will resonate with the SLA's membership. As others have suggested, if the SLA has to explain to its own *members* what the term means, there is a problem.

I think the SLA executive have to go back to the drawing board on this one. I'm concerned, however, that this one was even made public and put forward to membership. Going forward with a name change for a membership organization is a huge risk, and it is my opinion that the SLA executive has fumbled the ball on this one. We'll know for sure after the vote takes place.

While I will continue to support the SLA's efforts to being about a name change, you can be sure that I for one will be voting against Association of Strategic Knowledge Professionals as the future name of the organization.

Dare I say it? "Say No to ASKPro!"

(sorry...)

If SLA doesn't represent specialized librarians, they should change their name

2009-10-09T09:01:00.000-04:00

SLA is attempting to clarify their recent initiative to re-brand the association. A few notable points from the posting (which I recommend reading):

"[The SLA is] no longer an association of 'special libraries' as more than 50 percent of our members do not work in a 'library.'"

Nothing about where members do work, and if it is a library under a different name, or really something else entirely. The only thing clear is that the SLA exec wants to move away from being associated with libraries.

" There is nothing wrong with being a librarian or working in a library but there are instances when it limits how we are perceived and what we have to offer."

So: moving away from the term 'librarian' as well.

All librarians are info professionals, but not all info pros are librarians. Specialized libraries are information-providing units within an organization, but not all info-providing units are libraries. It means something more to be a librarian, and to work in a library.

"After an information professionals first job, the MLS is less emphasized. It is the experience and performance that is valued. The MLS degree is a means to an end and the credential to get one in the door. SLA realized this many years ago when they removed a professional library degree as a requirement for membership. And it has not hurt the association."

No, because it broadens the potential (paying) membership of the organization. The SLA, which has recently raised membership rates to cover increasing costs, has no interest in restricting who can join, so there is no way they would re-introduce the MLIS as an entrance requirement.

But as someone whose job it is to help deliver an MLIS program, and to help students earn their MLIS degree, I have to wonder about the SLAs continuing and public devaluation of this degree.

It is clear that a focus on librarians, libraries, and the MLIS degree are not considered to be in the best interest of the SLA. They'll gladly have librarians join, and even I think that librarians may benefit from membership in the SLA. But I don't think that specialized librarians can look to the SLA to represent their best interests.

Given all this, I think that it would be in the best interest of all that the SLA change their name so that it no longer includes the terms 'library' or 'librarian', since this will more accurately represent the reality of the SLA today as well as the direction in which the organization appears to be going.

This leaves specialized librarians without a true professional association to assist and represent them. Could this be an opportunity for the ALA? Or time to consider something else?

Update: I've commented on the SLA's original post, trying to be as constructive as possible. If you are an SLAer, I encourage you to do the same.

U.Texas secures virtual real estate in Second Life

2009-09-22T06:00:00.000-04:00

The university has secured "49 pieces of land" in the Second Life virtual world at a cost of just under $35,000 USD along with about $150/month in maintenance fees. While this may seem ridiculous at first ("Paying thousands of dollars for virtual land!?!"), the cost is on par with other software licensing and contracts that universities spend money on with little question.

The article suggests that the university plans on making the land available to its community (i.e. students, faculty, staff, etc) as a place for them to interact, build things, etc. Although I'm not a big fan of Second Life, I think this experimental approach is the right one, and is in keeping with the mandate of the university to provide learning environments for its community.

It will be interesting to see what they do, if anything, to protect their land and their environment. How will they keep advertisers and other trouble-makers off campus? Also, what policies will govern behaviour in this space? School policies are often laid over whatever government laws and regulations are in place where they are. How does that translate in a virtual space like Second Life? Hopefully this experimentation will provide useful insights into how we blend our virtual and physical worlds together.

Still here

2009-09-02T09:35:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the unintended hiatus from blogging. I've been and still am focused on the beginning of the semester here at SIS. It has been *great* this week to see all the students arrive and start classes: it has raised my energy level a notch or two, even above the typical back-to-school rush.

Today was also the day the scaffolding came down from 3661 Peel, a clear sign that we're open for business, and that the semester is *finally* underway.

SRI study indicates potential benefits of blended teaching

2009-08-21T15:02:00.000-04:00

The NYTimes reports on a study that finds that online education beats face-to-face, classroom education. Since this story and the associated report risks being cited as support for online initiatives, it is worth taking a look at the underpinning to see what kind of foundation the conclusions rest on.

The report was carried out for the US Department of Education by SRI International, and was conducted as a meta-analysis of existing literature on the research into the effectiveness of online education. The short version of this is that they look at the findings of related research and use stats to pull them together say something useful about a general hypothesis, in this case, the effectiveness of online learning.

Putting aside any concerns about the validity of the approach (which I don't have specifically, although I am naturally weary of the insights gained from observations buried under two levels of statistics and therefore abstraction...), the quality of the results is surely dependent on the quality of the studies in sampled. Here is some more information on what SRI based their analysis on:

They conducted a literature search from 1996-2008 and found only five studies "that both compared the learning effectiveness of online and face-to-face instruction for K–12 students and provided sufficient data for inclusion in a meta-analysis." These five studies were all published in the 2006-2008 timeframe.

They broadened their search to look at distance education in general, and found a total of 99 papers that included some comparison on face-to-face and online learning. Of these 99 papers, only 9 related to K-12 students, the others dealing with higher education, continuing education, etc.

They conclude that blended learning (a combination of online and face-to-face) provides the best results. However, they also note that their findings do not point to the online nature of learning being more effective.

Despite what appears to be strong support for online learning applications, the studies in this meta-analysis do not demonstrate that online learning is superior as a medium, In many of the studies showing an advantage for online learning, the online and classroom conditions differed in terms of time spent, curriculum and pedagogy. It was the combination of elements in the treatment conditions (which was likely to have included additional learning time and materials as well as additional opportunities for collaboration) that produced the observed learning advantages. At the same time, one should note that online learning is much more conducive to the expansion of learning time than is face-to-face instruction. [Emphasis theirs]

They also note several other weaknesses with the source studies: "[Many] of the studies suffered from weaknesses such as small sample sizes; failure to report retention rates for students in the conditions being contrasted; and, in many cases, potential bias stemming from the authors’ dual roles as experimenters and instructors."

My take-away from this report is that there is value to looking at traditional face-to-face learning and seeing how best to incorporate online resources and interactions, while at the same time taking this opportunity to re-evaluate the basic course structure, content, planning, and assessment methods.

How colleges are using the web to connect with potential students

2009-08-20T07:33:00.000-04:00

The NYTimes has a short piece on effective practices for college web sites.

The key points:

Information on academic programs should be prominent and seek to not only describe content, but to answer student questions about time, costs, etc.

Financial aid calculators are very popular with students

Students like video, but only if load-times are quick and no additional plug-ins are required (i.e. use Flash video)

The high-school students targeted by college sites were not all that interested in news and announcements... I wonder if that would be the same for our applications ( i.e. grads)

Colleges are making greater use of Facebook and Twitter to interact with students

Moving SIS

2009-07-30T10:53:00.000-04:00

In a week or so we're moving SIS to an old house up the hill. Needless to say, the cleaning out and packing that has been going on for the past few months has really started to pick up to the point where it is more or less all I'll be working on until and just after the move. I don't expect to have much time for writing longer posts on this blog, although I will be active on Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr. In case you were wondering.

The impact of the market crash at Harvard

2009-07-22T07:57:00.000-04:00

Vanity Fair is running on article on the hard times being experienced at Harvard. Harvard's endowment, once the largest in academia, has lost billions of dollars, the result being an extreme cash crunch on campus.

"There are going to be a hell of a lot of layoffs. Courses will be cut. Class sizes will get bigger," conceded a Harvard insider, who, like every other administrator on campus, was not permitted to speak openly to me on the classified subject of alignments and resizements and belt-tightenings.

Radical change is coming to Harvard. Fewer professors, for one thing. Fewer teaching assistants, janitors, and support staff. Shuttered libraries. Less money for research and travel and books. Cafés replaced by vending machines. Junior-varsity sports teams downgraded to clubs. No raises. No bonuses. No fresh coats of paint or new carpets. Overflowing trash cans.

Thankfully, things are not as dark here at McGill, but like all universities we are facing challenges, some financial, and some relating to the changing face of higher education.

Thinking through the SLA name change

2009-07-21T08:01:00.000-04:00

I've been following the discussion taking place around the SLA's proposed name change, and thought it would be a good idea to try to logically work through some of the challenges faced in such an endeavour. What follows is not a complete treatment of the topic, but rather one path through the mess, one line of reasoning.

-----

Now, we start with the premise that the name, the Special Libraries Association is no longer appropriate for the organization.

It is true that the SLA "is a member, not an institutional, organization." [source] The name Special Libraries Association can be thought of as being inappropriate, since it is formally not an association for special(ized) libraries, but for the people who work in these libraries. It would be more accurate to be called Special Librarians Association. However, this is not the primary critique of the name.

Most (?) of the people who work in specialized libraries are librarians (i.e. they have a library- related degree). However, not all of these people call themselves librarians, nor do they identify strongly with the idea of being a librarian.

Some of the people who work in a specialized library are not librarians (i.e. they do not have a library-related degree). They are professionals in other information-related fields whose members also work in positions outside of specialized libraries. For example, an analyst could find themselves working in a special library just as easily as they could be part of a research or product development group.

So the name 'Special Librarians Association' is not appropriate either, since there will be a number of people in the target audience who will not identify with that name. A more encompassing name would be something along the lines of 'Information Professionals Association', as this would allow all three categories of people (librarians with library degree, information professionals with library degree, and information professionals without library degree) who work in specialized libraries to identify with the association.

However, this name no longer reflects the focus on specialized libraries. Indeed, information professionals of all sorts would, upon seeing the name, believe that the Information Professionals Association was targeted at them, and that it was in some sense attempting to represent them. While this would broaden the potential membership for the SLA, it would dilute its focus and make it difficult to provide real value to its members. The number of chapters, divisions, etc would multiply as the various groups attempted to form communities of practice (i.e. people who share a set of goals and practices, and who carry out these practices in a common setting).

Fortunately, and as far as I know, the SLA is still interested in maintaining its focus on people working in specialized libraries, so it is important that this issue be addressed in the new name. But is 'specialized library' the best term to use here?

OSLIS does not have an entry for specialized library, but settles on special library instead. Similarly, Gale maintains a Directory of Special Libraries and Information Centers which "provides detailed contact and descriptive information on more than 35,800 subject-specific resource collections maintained by various government agencies, businesses, publishers, educational and nonprofit organizations, and libraries around the world."

It appears that even though 'special library' is a (very) poor choice of name to categorize these entities, it is the one that is generally and most commonly used. Attempting to use another term would require a significant amount of promotion and education of both members and clients, and there is no other term that is as specific as 'special libraries'. There is every chance that such an initiative would create more confusion then clarity. If the SLA plans on maintaining its focus on people working in special libraries, it is more or less stuck using this accepted term.

This brings us back to the beginning: Special Libraries Association. Now, remember that I had left this name because it did not reflect the fact that the SLA is a member organization, and so should indicate its members in its name. Changing 'Library' to 'Librarians' caused another problem, however, in that not everyone who works in a special library is a librarian, which led us to information professionals, which led us back to special libraries as we tried to re-establish the necessary focus.

This endless loop and be easily broken simply by ignoring my initial assertion that the name should reflect the members and not the institutions. While this approach is technically accurate, it complicates matters since there is no other umbrella term that can be used to identify information professionals that work in special libraries. An accurate name would be something like:

Association of Information Professionals working in Special Libraries (AIPSL)

which is not only a crummy acronym but is needlessly cumbersome. More importantly, it doesn't bring any clarity to the discussion, and it doesn't do a good job of explaining to members, potential members, and clients what the organization or its membership is all about.

Since there is no term that can be used to accurately represent only those people who work in special libraries, I recommend that abandoning that approach entirely. Instead, the SLA should define itself in terms of its point of focus, which is unique and which, as we have seen, can best be described as 'special libraries'.

In other words, "Special Libraries Association" is the best name for the SLA.

Addendum: I believe that the name of the SLA should be selected primarily to represent and be meaningful to its membership. This does not prevent the SLA or its members, however, from communicating with the market using terms and language that are meaningful to our clients. This, as I understand it, is the objective of the Alignment Project, and overall I support the initiative. My concern at the moment is specifically with an attempt to rename the organziation, as such an effort is unnecessary and likely to consume a considerable amount of resources and generate more confusion then value for the SLA's members.

Influencing student behavior in the classroom

2009-07-20T06:17:00.000-04:00

In preparing for the fall semester, I've been reevaluating how my course (web design and management) is organized. I've been paying special attention to the course feedback I've gotten from students, and while much of it is positive, there is plenty of room for improvement, even beyond the expectations of my students.

As part of this process, I've been reflecting on my own undergraduate experience in the classroom and how this has impacted my understanding of what university teaching should be. Let me state first that I'm not suggesting this is the best way to teach physics, let alone other subjects at university. However, it was my experience in university, and I believe it has something to tell us about the relationship between student behavior and course design.

The classroom experience I had when I did my undergrad in physics in 1989-1992 could best be described as the scribe model. The professor came into the class with a stack of worn, crinkled pages covered with notes. The professor then turned their back to us and proceeded to copy these notes onto the board, or at least the equations, with the better professors providing additional commentary and explanation along the way.

We copied everything down, somewhat frantically, as board after board was filled with formulas. I can't speak for everyone, but as I was copying things down, I was also trying to make sense of what was being communicated to us, which consisted of 'reading' the calculus, converting it into mental models of the phenomenon being described. (I was fine until the math went into n-space: then they lost me.) I expect I wasn't the only person taking this approach.

This practice is typically portrayed as a mindless exercise: why didn't the professor just give us a copy of their notes? Or why didn't we just take turns copying notes and make copies for the others? (My friend Kim Austin could have made a small fortune doing this: her notes were impeccable!) As I've just suggested, though, it wasn't a mindless exercise: we were learning while we were copying. The lecture was our first pass at the material (maybe second, if we had done our readings...), and we were trying to make sense of it as we went.

Not everyone in the classroom was learning. I'm sure there were people that were copying blindly without understanding any of it, without learning anything. I certainly did whenever the material was too hard for me to understand on the fly. "Just get it down and make sense of it later." There were also people who were not paying attention, who were working on another assignment, etc, although if you weren't going to take notes and pay attention, you just didn't go to class.

Laptops and cellphones were not a temptation for us: none of us had one. If we had had access to such technology, I can't imagine anyone would have used them for taking notes (I doubt we could generate formulas on the fly fast enough to keep up). We may have looked things up, but again, there wouldn't have been time. Turning my attention away from the lecture would have meant falling behind in the note-taking, as well as potentially missing that critical piece of information that I would need to complete my assignment or exam, or that would save me hours of studying ("You don't need to worry about this for the final"). Instead, we would have waited until after class to go over our notes and look up material we didn't quite understand.

(Maybe: we tended to get by using our class notes, the text book, and working through assignments alone and in groups. The library (the closest thing we had at the time to the internet/web) was a place we went to work, not a place where we went to look things up. I'm sure this was different for other subjects, though.)

To come back to the classroom, the bottom line was that what was happening in the classroom was important enough and relevant enough to our academic success that we could only develop behaviors that aligned with the classroom activity. You couldn't sit in the corner playing on your Gameboy and pass the course. Nor should you be able to, unless you were very smart and could understand the material and complete the assignments and exams without the guidance of the professor. (Of course, one could still question how smart you actually were if you chose to waste your time sitting in class...)

In other words, there were feedback mechanisms in place (i.e. assessment) that influenced how we learned to behave to meet our goals (typically, doing well in the course). What's more is that I don't think that the situation has changed much in today's classroom. Students' behavior in our classrooms is a function of their understanding of what they need to do to achieve their goals. Students are not failing en masse from our classes. Quite the opposite: grade inflation suggests that they are doing even better than their predecessors. This makes it quite hard to challenge the students' behavior in class: it does appear to be working for them, and working well.

But we also know that the grade inflation we see today does not necessarily mean that students are completing these classes having learnt more than students in the past. I won't turn that rock over here, but I think that as educators, we need to accept that (a) students quickly learn what is required of them to achieve their academic goals, (b) students are smart enough to modify their behavior to achieve academic success, and (c) if we are not happy with the way students behave in our classes, we need to stop focusing on the students and instead review our own teaching and assessment methods to see what might be contributing to the unwanted behavior, and what changes we can make to encourage 'appropriate' behavior.

I'll be expanding on these ideas in future posts as I share my course re-design thoughts and ideas with you.

The value of librar*

2009-07-14T05:33:00.000-04:00

Since hearing of the SLA's decision to attempt a name change, I've been thinking about the value of the word "library" in defining what we^† do. This is important because the SLA appears to be leaning towards abandoning the word, something which I think would be a major mistake (and not a "Oh, what a shame" kind of mistake, but more like a "Damn, where have all our jobs gone!?!" kind of mistake).

Along those lines, Michael Steeleworthy has written a post “Librarian” is not a dirty word that makes an important point:

To deny ourselves of the use of “librarian” is to rob ourselves of our culture’s understanding and respect for the role we play in society. Libraries and Librarians are often the lynchpins of communities and the storehouses of a local culture’s social history. Removing Librar* from our profession in favor of the clinical “information science” is to destroy the link that we have to the people we serve. Let us not forget that.

This is an important facet of the value of the term "library," although not the only reason to keep the term. I hope to find some time shortly to expand on my thinking here. In the meantime, head over the Michael's blog and read the rest of his ideas on this issue.

^†Although I have my MLIS and teach at a library school, I have never formally worked as a librarian. Project manager, web developer, knowledge manager, yes, but never a librarian. Still, I naturally identify with the profession and so consider myself part of the "we".

Say it again: software engineering ≠ computer science

2009-07-09T05:48:00.000-04:00

Chuck Connell has posted a nice piece in the June 2009 issue of DDJ (are they still around?) titled Software Engineering ≠ Computer Science, positing that the main difference between the two is that software engineering has an essential human component while computer science does not. Requirements, maintainability, safety, etc are all issues for software engineering that are not relevant (for the most part) to computer science.

I think this is a useful way of looking at this problem and delimiting the scope of each field. Software engineering and computer science are both important, but deal with separate problem spaces. As I've said before, you wouldn't hire a physicist to build a bridge, or a biologist to perform an operation, so similarly you wouldn't hire a computer science to build an application meant to go into production, nor would you hire a software engineer to develop new search algorithms.

This is not just a case of semantics: the lack of a clear understanding and consistent use of the two terms is confusing for students and employers alike, and does little to benefit either field.

Follow-up on peerScholar

2009-06-25T09:32:00.000-04:00

I'd like to point out two opinion pieces in the National Post following up on the Unions vs U of T professor case I wrote about the other day.

First, an important aspect of this case that I discovered while writing this post. I was surprised and disappointed to learn that peerScholar is a Pearson product. I expected the software, if shared, to be available to other professors and universities under an open-source license. Naïve on my part, I guess. I'm assuming that after Joordens developed the product for his course, Pearson acquired rights to the software and is now looking to sell it into all universities who are dealing with the problem of large classes. No pricing is available on the web site, but my guess is that since you have to contact a sales rep for that information, it isn't free and it isn't cheap. That parties stand to benefit financially from the use of this software should have been made clear from the start, since it changes the context of the discussion, giving both parties a fair amount of self-interest in the outcome. Anyway, on to the opinion pieces...

The first opinion piece is by the professor involved, Steve Joordens, titled Placating unions versus educating students. While I agree with Joordens that the unions should not be allowed to prevent him from using peer-assessment in his course, I didn't find his editorial did much to support his position. Placing this discussion in the context of formal vs informal education doesn't help, especially when the issue has to do with assessment, specifically peer-assessment. The learning the students do though peer-assessment still formal, certainly more formal then when they learn from their friends how to add an application to their iPhone.

(FWIW, kids don't have a "complex and deep knowledge of iPhones, Facebook and computers in general". That is a myth. They were introduced to these applications at a time when the user interfaces were much more advanced and usable then when we started using them. As a result, their conceptual models of these devices are much different. And while they do have a great facility with the technologies, there are very, very few of them who have any idea how they work at all.)

Joordens is entirely correct that the unions will not succeeded in stopping him, they'll just force him to work around the union rules to achieve his goals.

The union's op-ed piece is titled Fast and cheap student grading isn't the answer at first glance provides a good justification for their position against the use of PeerScholar. For example, they calculate that the course generates approx $1.8 million in revenue for the university, with only $30,000 going to pay for the salaries of the teacher and existing TA. They argue that more could money could be spent on TA. However, this argument assumes a simplistic model of university economics.

Putting aside overhead costs for the course, the reality is that while you do have a few large 1500 seat classes like this one, you have many courses and programs that do not pull in enough revenue to cover their costs. Courses are not restricted by the revenue they generate, nor do they have access to all the revenue they generate. This allows the university to fund a wide range of activities that do not generate enough revenue on their own, but which nevertheless contribute to the student experience and the university as a whole. It is misleading, therefore, to suggest that there is over $1.7 million sitting in an account somewhere waiting to be spent on the course.

I agree that the formula for TA budgets are too small, and that 1500 people in a class is too many. However, I don't accept the union's position that they are making a stand on behalf of the students, nor do I accept Joordens' position that this is entirely about student learning.

If there is anything positive to be drawn from all this, it is that universities should be taking a look at the issues around large classes, as well as the availability and use of teaching assistants.

Chris Anderson caught plagiarising Wikipedia, hopes no one minds

2009-06-25T05:41:00.000-04:00

The Virginia Quarterly Review has discovered that Chris Anderson's book Free contains sections that have been plagiarized from Wikipedia. Anderson has issued the same comment that most people who get caught doing this kind of thing do: sorry, my mistake, we'll change add proper citations in future versions of the book.

Anderson is not only an author, but the editor of Wired magazine. He knows better, and this is not a mistake someone with his experience can easily make. His excuse that footnotes were removed at the last minute is lame, since in many cases the text is pulled directly from Wikipedia, requiring quotations and footnotes. I encourage you to click through to the article linked to above and review the examples yourself.

I think that Anderson may have taken the notion of 'free' that he is pushing in his book a bit to seriously. I can see him on his book tour, "Let me give you an example of free. Parts of this book you paid for, the book I just signed for you, were written by someone else, and I used them in my book, for free!"

A radical notion indeed. We used to call this dishonesty. Anderson and his publishers, Hyperion Books, appear to want to brush it all away with an apology. They apologize, you get less then what you paid for (since I'm assuming you didn't pay $30 for repurposed wikipedia entries), they keep your money.

I think in addition to apologizing, Anderson should donate his income from the book and the publisher their profits from the book to the Wikimedia Foundation. Then I might just believe he is sorry about the mistake, and not just sorry that he got caught.

SLA board decides to pursue name change

2009-06-23T11:01:00.000-04:00

Although I was tracking the twitter and blog output from the recent SLA conference, I somehow missed the news that the board has decided to pursue a name change.

We are heeding the research results as well as the call from our members that our name no longer represents who we are and the value we add for our employers.

The research they are alluding to is the SLA Alignment Project , although I can't find much specifically on the topic of renaming. Judging from the blog post linked to above, the motivation is the perceived need to come up with a name that means something to companies, executives, or anyone else who relies on the services of specialized libraries.

I'm not sold that a name change is what is needed at this point, or rather, is where the SLA should be investing its energies. As a professional organization, the SLA does represent the profession and is responsible for promoting the profession. However, the language in the announcement suggests that the SLA executive has confused the SLA the organization with being the profession (i.e. "our name no longer represents who we are and the value we add for our employers" (emphasis mine)).

The problem with this is that is makes the exercise of renaming the organization that much harder, since it challenges the professional identities of people, asking them to give a name to what they do. And whatever is decided, a line will be drawn with some people included and others feeling less so.

What I'd like to see is what specifically is wrong with Special Libraries Association? I've never liked 'special' as a descriptor, since the links to its origins (specialized libraries) are not clear. 'Association' can't be a problem, so I would guess that it again comes down to 'libraries' being a bad word.

In any case, some folks have started a forum to discuss potential name changes.

Coming up with a better name is going to be a long process, one that will consume a lot of time and resources, and on that is likely to generate a fair amount of heat (as opposed to light) between those involved. It is a costly undertaking, and one that is unlikely to generate any real benefits for its members. Does anyone think that a name change of the professional association is going to create job opportunities for its members?

In the end, I think the SLA would have been better to just stick with SLA, but have it mean nothing. "It used to stand for Special Libraries Association, but now it doesn't mean anything."

There. Done. Now, on to more important things...

What Google thinks of libraries

2009-06-23T08:00:00.000-04:00

Interesting the ways in which Google Suggest tries to complete the phrase "libraries are...".

The suggestions are based on analysis of search queries submitted by users, so they reflect on what people are looking for, not necessarily what people are saying about libraries.

Thanks for Seb Paquet for the idea.

Elsevier caught paying for positive textbook reviews

2009-06-23T06:03:00.000-04:00

Elsevier, yes the same academic publishers who were recently caught publishing fake medical journals to promote the products of paying pharmaceutical companies, has admitted to paying people to give five-star reviews to one of their textbooks on Amazon.com.

I wonder: is Elsevier the only publisher carrying out these dishonest business practices, or are they merely the only ones with the misfortune of being caught. And what are librarians doing, if anything, to make sure their trust in publishers is not misplaced?

More thoughts on automating teaching assistants out of a job

2009-06-23T05:33:00.000-04:00

In yesterday's post on the U of T professor that was prevented of using student assessment methods in his course, I took the position that unions should not be allowed to dictate how an instructor teaches their course. I still believe this to be true, but wanted to elaborate a bit on this specific position.

Steve Joordens, the professor involved in this case, teaches an intro psychology course with 1400 students. That is problem number one, and one that is faced by almost every university. That number of students would overwhelms any conventional teaching scenario. Even setting an acceptable class size at 50 students would require 28 sections, with 28 professors teaching. While that may appear at first to be a solution to the PhD employment problem, the resources and logistics for putting on 28 separate sections (vs. one or a few mega-auditorium classes) is hard. And you would need to pay those 28 professors, who even at typical sessional rates would cost around $140,000 per semester.

That's only about 100$/student, though, so it wouldn't be impossible to do this. If tuition rates could be increased to cover the additional costs of teaching, facilities, and operations. Which they can't, at least not at most universities. So we're stuck with the basic parameters of the problem: one professor teaching a class of 1400 students.

The typical solution involves trying to get 1400 to view the lectures, then using machine-readable assessment methods. Pulling even that off is a lot of work, but it still leaves a lot of be desired as far as student learning goes.

What complicates the matter somewhat is Joordens' motivation for introducing the PeerScholar software. In this blog comment in 2006, he states that his motivation behind the PeerScholar system was pedagogical:

While I did indeed – perhaps stupidly it now seems – point out some of the economic value of the peer-to-peer approach, it was not instituted for economic value at all. It was instituted because it provides a method of teaching thinking and communication skills that is generally regarded as superior, yup superior, to TA grading. That is, by applying critical analysis skills (call that marking if you like) to written pieces that vary from poorly to well written, students gain extremely valuable skills that they can then apply to their own work. Thus, the grading component of the assignments may be where the true learning is occurring.

The "stupid" comment he refers to is the one cited in the courts' judgment, apparently taken from Joordens' web site:

I will be completely honest. The original reason for seriously considering a peer-to-peer evaluation process was financial. We cannot afford to pay a large team of TAs to mark written answers for large classes. Moreover, it would take them so long to do the marking that it also just wouldn't be practical. Peer-to-peer evaluation, when combined with great internet programming, is fast and cheap.

In other words, Joordens wanted to improve the student learning by introducing assessment that was not based on multiple-choice answers. However, the financial restrictions of the situation prevent him from hiring TAs to correct written assignments, so he implements a peer-review solution which provides the same or better student outcomes.

The union, predictably, is concerned only with the impact this has on their members: the loss of jobs of teaching assistants. Note that in this specific case there is no loss of jobs because there was no budget anyway to hire teaching assistants to handle this marking. Joordens wasn't using the peer review system to cut costs, he was trying to improve student outcomes without incurring additional costs.

Still, the union has to fight this on principle: they cannot allow this kind of solution to take root on campus because it has the potential to reduce the need for teaching assistants. This is a real risk, especially with universities looking for ways to reduce costs, and especially if it can be positioned as improving student outcomes.

It doesn't have to be that way, of course. Educational technologies and teaching assistants can co-exist in ways that lead to improved student experiences and outcomes. Students can become more engaged in their learning, teaching assistants, freed of some of the burden of correcting, can focus on interacting with students and teaching.

Now that the union and the Ontario courts have established a precedent that attempts to reduce dependencies on TAs will challenged and most likely prevented, instructors will be wary of making changes to how they deliver and manage their courses. But I hope that people will still try to innovate, to find ways to improve student learning in more efficient and effective ways. The system as it is not sustainable, and we are going to need creative solutions in the coming years if we are to continue in our role as establishments of higher learning. Peer-review assessment methods are not the biggest threat faced by teaching assistants, and it is time that they and their unions faced that fact.

Union prevents U of T professor from using student-assessment methods

2009-06-22T12:48:00.000-04:00

professor at the University of Toronto, lacking funds to hire teaching assistants, decides to adopt a peer-review assessment model for work worth 10% his course grade. He develops a software application called PeerScholar that facilitates the student peer-review process. The union representing the teaching assistants takes him to court, since their collective agreement states that students cannot correct work without getting paid for it. The union wins their case. He appealed, and the court upheld their original decision. Now, the professor going back to his original method, where the assignments were marked entirely by software.

I'm not sure how the professor argued his case, but I would have positioned the student assessment as part of the learning process, which it is. As such, I cannot see the union being allowed to intervene in the classroom and dictate what teaching methods the professor can and cannot use.

I'm hoping that this news gets some more traction in academic news circles so that hopefully more details and reaction will emerge.

Update 1: I came across this related editorial at the NP: CUPE, proudly stopping progress:

PeerScholar was a research project worth pursuing for its own sake, but the Ontario Superior Court's support for CUPE's grievance means that the Joordens/Pare research will be very difficult to reproduce scientifically, under real-world conditions, inside Ontario. It also means that PeerScholar, as a made-in-Ontario software application, will be hard to sell to colleges and universities where teaching assistants are unionized. And the potential for Peer-Scholar to improve the quality of large first-year survey classes may never be realized. How often does a labour union, with one single action, harm science, education and business all at once? What an astonishing hat trick of ignorance and greed; doff your lids, readers.

Update 2: Here is a 2006 post from Rochelle Mazar that documents the beginning of this brouhahah.

(Original link via George Siemens)