Sommerloch
This is one of my favorite German words, indicating the general slowdown in economic and news activity during the vacation months. Clearly, I am sitting smack in the middle of the “summer hole,” not having posted since June. Between the end of the semester here and a fab vacation to France, blogging has taken a back seat.
To fill the hole, here are some links to student video projects from my course last semester on video production for libraries by librarians. There’s a playlist with all eight videos, and here’s a small sample:
Martin will doch nur lesen = Martin just wants to read
The variety of video techniques and storytelling lines used in these projects amazed me, with each group coming up with something that really surprised me.
Building open source bridges
I have long annoyed my American colleagues with occasional harangues about how we could learn from other nations’ libraries, even if those nations are not English-speaking as a rule. German libraries do all sorts of interesting things, for example, with open source (and not so open source) software, about which we know little given the language barrier. In Germany, however, non-German open source library software projects are generally well known among programmers and the IT-oriented. At present VuFind is all the rage, to name one example.
In a recent tweet, I mentioned how happy I was to see some of my favorite mostly North American OS thinkers and writers (I tossed Edlef in for good measure!) cited in an undergraduate thesis currently on my desk. Specifically, the articles cited are:
Chudnov, Daniel, ‘Open Source Library Systems: Getting Started’, oss4lib – open source systems for libraries, 1999 <http://www.oss4lib.org/readings/oss4lib-getting-started.php>.
—, ‘The Future of FLOSS in Libraries’, in Information tomorrow: reflections on technology and the future of public and academic libraries (Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc., 2007), 19-30.
Colford, Scot, ‘Explaining free and open source software’, Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 35 (2009), 10-14 10.1002/bult.2008.1720350205.
Schneider, K. G., ‘The thick of the fray: Open source software in libraries in the first decade of this century’, Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 35 (2009), 15-19 10.1002/bult.2008.1720350206.
Stabenau, Edlef, ‘Online Auskunft in deutschen Bibliotheken’, bibliothekar.de <http://www.bibliothekar.de/content/view/15/26/>.
A student last year wrote her thesis on Koha, and the thesis in which I found these citations is a survey of five open source projects in German libraries, so clearly something is catching on here if these topics are finding their way into the curriculum and catching the interest of some of the brightest students here.
Apps and borders
DRM is a noxious thing. There are apparently many apps developed for the iPhone/iPad that are not licensed globally. In other words, much as with music, one has to have an account in a specific country in order to get access to that store for purchases. It has always been this way with music, and now apps suffer from the same twisted logic.
The apps where I have noticed this are EasyGo, used by the local transit company here to put their schedules on and sell tickets via Apple (and other) devices, and radio.de, an iPhone version of the radio.de Website. I simply fail to understand the logic here. No American company is going to offer me an app nor make money from giving me access to German Internet radio streams, so why not just license the free (yes, free!) app globally.
Given how mobile our societies are, this kind of stuff affects a lot of people. Every single day, hordes of American tourists land in Europe, many packing iPhones; conversely, many Europeans fly elsewhere, and so on. It is a big messy jumble and we move around literally oblivious to borders other than when passing through passport control in airports or using the Apple iTunes store. Can’t do much about the former, but shouldn’t the latter play nicer?
Incidentally, does anyone know how wise it would be to feed content from multiple stores onto a single device? Something tells me the dueling accounts would do battle, and I would lose.
What do librarians do?
Back in March I gave a brief and lighthearted talk on the various job titles one sees in US libraries.
While doing so, it occurred to me that we use a lot of quirky titles, and as the person who created the job title “resource linking librarian” for a job we were posting a few years ago, I cannot deny my part in creating the chaos. Somehow it all works out, but it does make for some pretty funny job titles.
Shameless move by the CDU
Not a joke, alas
Probably shouldn’t get all worked up about this, but this might be the crassest, most damnable mindless misappropriation of American culture in Germany, ever. Seriously!? Black is Beautiful!? Are they out of their minds? After watching SPD politicians last fall attempt to channel Barack Obama–including, regretfully, the slogan “yes we can” in English–I thought things had hit rock bottom in the misappropriation department. Evidently that was overly optimistic.
Reaching into the history of the American civil rights movement and ripping this slogan from its context cheapens it significance and its history. That a center right party would do so makes it downright cynical. Putting a picture of a bunch of white people next to it is just … wrong. Selling it on t-shirts, wrist bands, and beach towels? Words fail me. This is not irony or some postmodern pastiche. It is tasteless.
This was actually called into life by the Junge Union, the young Republicans of Germany. Given the nature of their other campaigns (Nobel Peace Prize for Kohl, referring to Die Linke as crap, and using sex to sell politics, among others) I suppose this campaign fits right in. Suddenly, the cesspool of American politics seems like the moral high ground. Now that is a scary thought.
Germany and elite universities
flickr, wallyg
In the last decade, Germany has had an active debate about the future of its universities, with many lamenting the fact that German universities are not considered among the world’s elite institutions by anyone’s measures (see: NYT, Spiegel, DW). While this has led to a large outpouring of federal money directed at a handful of institutions, something about this top-down approach–“we hereby deem thee to be elite”–has struck me as out of step with how other universities have achieved their status.
Recently, a brief article in a local student newspaper (student!) made this somewhat clearer by defining the steps a university must go through to get their money. To be elite, a university must fulfill the three tiers of the program: Read more…
Fact checking
Hertha BSC - russelljsmith, flickr
Fact checking is an essential part of quality journalism. The New York Times generally seems to do a decent job, but in an article from Sunday on the German soccer Bundesliga somehow their fact checkers missed two glaring errors right at the beginning of the article:
“After the Wall, Berlin’s Olympiastadion was one of the landmarks of German division. And after the now-united city’s team, Hertha, succumbed to a late goal on Saturday, losing 1-0 to Schalke, its relegation from the Bundesliga now looks to be inevitable.
“That means the former East German soccer league will have no representative in the country’s most affluent division. It also means the German capital city will have no team in the Bundesliga.”
How someone (Rob Hughes) who reports on German soccer could think that Hertha BSC, a founding member of the Bundesliga in the Federal Republic of Germany, was a member of the “former East German soccer league” is a bit beyond me, since even a casual fan would have to know that that is absurd.
Olympiastadion - Markus Kolletzky, flickr
But that is a rather narrow point for most people. The far more egregious error is referring to the Olympiastadion as a “landmark” of divided Germany. It is a landmark, however, of Nazi Germany.
Having just read an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung last week (sadly not online, or rather only for a ridiculous fee) about how major journalism outlets are cutting back on fact checkers–most never had any to spare to begin with–I think things are only going to get worse in this department.
Seen any juicy factual errors lately?
The Bulwark of Democracy?
An oft-repeated refrain in the ongoing newspaper crisis is that democracies need a vibrant and free press that aggressively questions power. This is a noble notion, but scratch the surface and the dysfunctional underbelly emerges. The credentialed press only gains access to information by playing nice with those in power. Ask the wrong questions or probe too deeply, and one can find one’s access to power cut off. This takes on absurd and obvious dimensions in the pop culture arena, such as with the distasteful Tiger Woods soap opera of recent months, where his handlers hand-picked “reporters” who would “interview” him so he could show “contrition.” It is sad when it occurs in such cases, but takes on tragic dimensions when dealing with weightier issues. Read more…
Other people’s toys
flickr, myuibe
So the iPad has landed, selling more units than even Apple had bothered to predict. Not much of a surprise there, and it sounds as if a lot of people are pretty happy with the machine. Despite my nannying about the iPad, it is a pretty cool device and I am mulling waiting for the inevitable price drop and picking one up down the road.
Greg Knauss is one of my favorite bloggers, bar none, and I generally snort coffee out my nose laughing at his posts. The other day he dropped a small bomb on Cory Doctorow for whinging about how the iPad is an unhackable device (screws not glues is his mantra). I’m right there on his arguments against Doctorow’s hacker elitism; I, too, want devices that work as advertised that do not force me to read manuals or decrypt error messages while on a “service” call costing me $3.99 a minute. Read more…
To buy or not, iPad style
As a fan of flowcharts and an iPad skeptic, this example from the funsters at BBspot was right up my alley:
Should I buy an iPad?
Per their matrix, I think I am not supposed to use the flowchart. Your results may vary.
The Bibliobrary 