Learning new stuff

In yet another effort to totally overload myself, I'm sitting in on a colleague's digital history class. And he just mentioned that he wanted everyone to develop a digital persona distinct from the social media ones that we may already have.

And I remembered: I have a blog.

Huh.

So: maybe I'll chronicle this little experience.

Technology and the Job Search

[Sorta-update: I went back and read this after I posted it, and realized that the tone sounded a lot like "Say! Back in the day, we delivered our job applications via dirigible or telegraph, but it seems that the profession is really getting on board with these computing machines, so maybe you should, too!" Honestly, I am not 90 years old. But I'm kind of amazed how a ten-year gap can leave me sounding that way. If you find yourself rolling your eyes at the painfully obvious, then skip straight down to the part where I lecture you about controlling your online persona. Then you can roll your eyes because I'm a schoolmarm.  ::sigh:: ]

[AACK! Real edit! Ellen just mentioned Interfolio, which I had totally forgotten about, since it didn't even exist when I was applying. If anyone wants to chat about that in the comments, I'll just sit back and listen.]


Back when Mama Notorious was on the job market… Well, actually, it wasn’t all that long ago. Maybe a decade or so ago. And yet look at the difference a decade can make.

As I was saying: Back just past the turn of the millennium, the role of technology in the job search was generally limited to finding the job ads: disciplinary website (AHA, MLA, etc.), H-Net, and the Chronicle. But other than that, the search was almost entirely analog. I can recall having my home table covered with stacks of application packets: Cover letters and CVs went to everyone; in some cases the little stack would have a writing sample, a teaching portfolio, or some other supplementary material. And there was the stack of FedEx envelopes. A wing and a prayer: most schools did not acknowledge receipt of your application packet (though one or two did say you could enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope, and they'd mail you your acknowledgement). After that, it was on to the AHA, then waiting at home for the phone to ring or the e-mail to chime for that elusive campus visit, then more waiting.

My sophisticated in-home telecommunications setup looked something like this.

That, in short, is the job search that I know.

Now, let us count the changes, from start to finish:

• Job ads: Still online. No real change there. In fact, most of the job sites look exactly like they did back in my day -- which, when you think of it, is kind of weird.
• Submitting the application: A pretty substantial set of changes here. I’m not sure if anybody asks for paper applications anymore. PDF/e-mail submissions are the most common, followed by schools where you upload to an HR website. Sadly, none of these systems can prevent you from sending the wrong letter to the wrong school. In my book, this is a huge improvement. Graduate students are an impoverished lot, generally speaking, and they don’t make enough to make itemizing those shipping fees make any financial sense, so the grad student in question is just plain stuck with the cost. It also eliminates the “Did it arrive in time?” anxiety, and no more messing about with “receipt date” versus “postmark date”. Same goes for faculty letters: they just type ‘em up and send ‘em in. Unless, of course, there’s one of those odious forms to fill out that goes with them. Can we please stop having those? In any case, about the only thing that I’d miss is the satisfaction of taking yet another giant physical stack of fat application envelopes and waving bye-bye to them at the post office. But I think the benefits outweigh the losses.
• Preliminary interviews: This was by far the biggest complaint among grad students back in my day, and I think it remains so. There is no good way to do a preliminary interview; it’s a matter of finding the best of bad choices. The conference interview — running around, finding your location, practicing your 90-second pitch in a corner behind a potted plant, trying not to throw up — is a rite of passage, but one that can leave the person in question bloody and broken. If you want a shot at a conference interview, you need to book well in advance of knowing whether you have any interested parties. So that’s $1000 expense right there, if you’re lucky, and no one is reimbursing you for that. Couple that with the weirdness of a suite interview, or the awkwardness of the “pit” interviews, and it’s just a nasty experience. And I’ve even heard of some cash-strapped schools insisting on the conference interview, but conducting them in the hotel’s public spaces. But back in my day, the alternative was the phone interview, which everyone agreed was much, much worse. Skype is beginning to emerge as a truly viable alternative. Of course, it disadvantages the technologically clumsy, and I’m giggling trying to imagine implementing something similar in the days of dial-up (again: a decade makes a difference!) but younger grad students may actually be more comfortable operating this way in some cases. Of course, many interviews are still at the big conferences. But as budgets shrink, I think that the Skype interview is going to become more important. And honestly, if someone gave me the choice, as a job-seeker, between having my preliminary interview in a suite, the pit, by phone, or over Skype, factoring in both awkwardness and expense, I’d choose Skype in a heartbeat.
• Waiting for the call: I think this one’s more or less a wash: waiting for a phone call vs. waiting for an e-mail (and most of this was done by e-mail in my day as well) is pretty much the same thing. The only real difference here is…
• The Wiki. Yes, I think that it deserves to be capitalized. Way back in… what was it? 2005? Something like that. Anyway, someone noticed that there were a ton of threads in a section of the Chronicle forums called “Have you heard?” Basically, anxious job-seekers wanted to know whether other people had heard anything at stage X from school Z, so they could know whether a particular search was moving on without them, or whether there was still hope that that call would come. So someone built a wiki, and it’s been running ever since. Of course, this wiki is like all others in that its content is user-generated, with all the problems that implies. It’s a largely self-regulating community, but the occasional troll does sneak in: “They made me a job offer!” when no such thing ever happened. Still, some info is better than none… or is it? The wiki can tell you when to stop hoping, but is that a good thing?
• The presentation: Back in my ABD and job-seeking days, few people in my field (medieval) had Powerpoints to go with their presentations. I, personally, came armed with handouts with a brief outline, some key texts, and a map. And I was in the majority, by far. Now, I can’t recall the last time that I saw a job talk without a visual presentation. But not all Powerpoints are created equal, so this is yet another skill that you need to make sure you’ve got down cold before the campus visit… as well as knowing what to do if the tech goes belly-up.

On the whole, I think that the way that technology has been integrated into the job search has been a very good thing, and most of it has the potential to make things much easier on the grad student pocketbook. But new technologies have also added a new worry that we didn't have back in the day, one that could be the subject of a whole 'nother post (though it won't, at least not by me) called "It's 10 p.m. -- Do you know what your online persona is doing?" Seriously: google yourself. In fact, Have a friendly faculty member at your institution google you so you aren't deceived by the you-specific results that the algorithm will give you in particular; you want an outsider's search results. You should start monitoring and controlling your online presence to whatever degree possible as far in advance as possible. Delete embarrassing pictures -- better yet, don't allow embarrassing pictures to be taken of you. You might also consider actively augmenting the professional you that appears online by building and maintaining a profile at a site like Academia.edu. Get it up there several months in advance and it will be one of the first hits when someone googles your name and the school, and you get to control that presentation.

So that is my longish chunk of unsolicited and semi-informed advice. But I’ve really only experienced most of this at one remove. Thoughts from job seekers who have experienced this? What about hiring committees? Any issues with reluctant adopters among the faculty? And for those of you in grad programs that mentor you through the process (for example, with interviewing workshops), are you getting mentoring/advice that incorporates these methods? Anything else that I'm missing here?

"Your bottom cover may fall off at any moment", and other interesting odds and ends

• Thank you to all of you who popped in with suggestions and sympathy on my recent tech crisis. Through the fortunate fact that I had the content (if not the system) backed up on a flash drive, I have suffered no data loss, and the efforts of my college's tech person preserved the framework as well. My computer appears to be resurrected from the dead, but in a way that provokes questions about the nature of existence. First, he replaced the OS. Then, a week later, he gave me a new hard drive. Then, when that didn't work, he took out the new hard drive (with the old data and the new OS) and installed it in a computer body (same model as my old one) that had been returned by a departing faculty member. So I've got the same memories, implanted into a transplanted brain, which was then transplanted into a new body. The philosophical implications of this are interesting: if your brain and body are different, but you remember the same things, are you the same entity? I think I saw this movie.
  
• Also: somewhere between brain transplant and body transplant, I got an e-mail from tech guy, ominously titled "extra parts." I quote it here, for your amusement: "I just realized that I left out REALLY important pieces from your laptop before you left. Your bottom cover may fall off at any moment because in the rush I forgot to put the screws back on. Please come to my office as soon as possible." It is a comment on my mental state that I found this hilarious.
• Three of my four February weekends have been claimed by conference/seminar/workshop thingies. Apparently this is going on all over the place lately. I think that all conference organizers suddenly thought, "We should plan things early in the semester, because late semester is always a really crowded time for academics." Which would be well and good if they hadn't all thought this simultaneously. Or even if fools like me hadn't thought, of each one individually, "Hey, I could go to this. After all, it's February, and that's a slow month." And now all the slow months are gone.
  
• What else have I been up to? Oh, teaching the usual three classes, trying to keep up with reading for two students prepping for M.A. exams, applying for a Amazing Seminar Thingie (hat-tip to Dr. Crazy for the terminology), trying to prep another for a prospectus defense, writing lectures, doing readings, and devising writing assignments for a new course that is only Medieval-Adjacent, trying to continue with a good meditation and yoga schedule, attempting not to descend into a life of household squalor in which I crouch among the dustbunnies, hair unwashed, wearing dirty clothes, and subsisting on mustard packets found in a corner of an empty fridge...
• Here's an awesome thing: my financial life appears to be in order, for the first time in ages. More details in a real post. But even though it doesn't involve any sort of fabulous inheritance or anything, I promise you that you will be in awe when I tell you about it.
• What I haven't been doing: working on my kalamazoo paper. At all.

But... I want to leave you with a little piece of awesomeness to brighten your day. This morning, while walking home from a breakfast I treated myself to, I saw this on a telephone pole near where I live:

Go ahead. Take one.

A Conversation

We join our heroine at the tech support center for the college. Her laptop is still acting up, but now things have gone from bad to worse, as the computer, when it deigns to turn on, no longer seems to "see" the external hard drive that she's been frantically doing backups on...

TECH PERSON: Okay, plug the external drive into the computer for me, and I'll see about reformatting it.

NOTORIOUS [plugging things in]: Thanks. It doesn't see it, and it's been making a weird noise. But the port itself seems to be working fine.

EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE: Click. Click-click. Click.

TECH PERSON: Oh.

NOTORIOUS: What is it?

TECH PERSON: Oh. That's bad.

NOTORIOUS: What is it?

TECH PERSON: It's BAD.

EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE: Click.

scene.

Technology Terror

Today, through no fault of my own, I nearly bricked my laptop.

Isn't that an evocative phrase? It means pretty much what you'd think it means: to turn an expensive piece of technology (computer; smart phone) into the functional equivalent of a brick.

The thing had been hinky for a while. Slow, outdated OS, and all that. This is pretty normal -- we usually get scheduled for computer replacement around here about once every four years, and the last year of that tends to limp along. I'm one year out, so this should have begun my limping year. But a year ago, if you'll recall, I got caught between a moving vehicle and a parked bus while out on my bike, and treated like a pinball until I finally hit the ground. And yes, my laptop was riding along with me. Cushioned, sure; but still. But it still worked! It seemed to be undamaged, except for a bent port. ("I never use that one anyway!") But apparently these things can sneak up on you.

And so, I have become acquainted with Mac's Gray Veil of Death -- four times in the last two weeks. And the most recent of these was at 4 p.m. today, a Friday. Our technician performed some Mac-Fu and perhaps even sacrificed a small mammal, and it appears to be running again.

And yes, I have backups. But without a machine to load them on?

And you know the other thing I have? Deadlines. Things I've promised people. Et caetera.

So light a candle, do a chant, help me make it through here. And if you don't hear from me for a while, I'm not dead. But my computer might well be.

Another Reason to Love Scrivener

I promise I'll stop flogging this software soon. But I've been working on my cat-herdingest syllabus -- the one that requires a syllabus, daily lesson plans, in-class activities, worksheets, workshops, pdf readings, and all of this to be organized in the proper order -- and let me tell you that Scrivener (especially its outliner function!) is making this all fully doable.

I am happy.

On Technology

Today, my friend the Wizard Chimp* arrived for a 5-day visit. This is a good thing.

Chimpy is one of those people who never met a gadget or social media format she didn't like. Her main packing issues were what bits of technology she should take with her.** Things like clothes were secondary.

She finds my approach to technology... cute. Two incidents from this morning illustrate the wide spectrum of non-technophobes' use of technology:

1. She saw my phone, and it was like she'd entered Amish country. A couple of years ago, I dropped my contract-based cell phone, and it gave up the ghost a few months before the two-year contract period expired, which would seem to have required me to pay hundreds of dollars for a cheap phone from the service provider's store.*** I emphatically did not want to do that, so the helpful person at the phone place suggested I go to the nearest big box electronics store and buy a burner phone. They would then install my SIM card in the new, disposable thingy. I had no idea you could do this. So I did, and paid $30 for a phone, the features of which include: 1) sending and receiving phone calls, and 2) sending and receiving text messages. There is not even a cheap camera in it, which is fine, because I have a real camera. And this morning, I left it at home. "I can't believe my best friend is someone who doesn't have a smart phone, and doesn't even bother to take the phone she has with her," she said.

2. While Chimpy checked in with the gazillion social media things she's on, I paid my bills. While much of this was done online, the process included writing things down in my paper checkbook register, doing the math in my head, and scribbling out a monthly budget on the back of a credit card receipt to figure out how much money Visa got this month. She was agog with wonder.

Now, as you know, I don't have a problem with technology. I, of course, have a bit of web presence. I use things like Scrivener and Zotero to get my work done. I ditched the landline ages ago. But I think our approach differs in where we draw the line between "necessity" and "convenience" (and also, perhaps, "too much of a pain in the ass to bother with"). We find each other's approach an endless source of amusement. And the fact that we can be amused, rather than disdainful, is part of why we're such good friends.


*It's a long story.

**She ended up with: iPad + portable keyboard, smart phone, kindle, and digital camera. I think.

***Seriously, this whole thing about getting sucked into a two-year contract to avoid paying $300 for even a cheap-ass phone? It makes me indignant. There is technology you need, so you pay for it. Then there is technology that marketers try to convince you you need, and they charge you through the nose for it. Grrr....

Productivity Tools

Just a quick post today, as I'm on the move again. So what I have for you is the list of productivity tools for writers:

Citation & Note-taking:

• Ro & Travelia recommend Evernote
• Scatterwriter uses Zotero, as do I.

Basic writing software: Frogprincess and a couple others (me included) are using Scrivener.** Don't worry – it's perfectly compatible with Word. It's just a very nice format for organizing and constructing your work, and especially for looking at it in small chunks that you can later seamlessly integrate. Be warned, though: there is a slight learning curve – it takes about a week to learn 85% of it (and the other 15% you may not actually need). Another note: it was designed for Macs, and I think the PC version is still only in Beta, FWIW.

Miscellaneous Productivity Ideas:

• NW girl recommends "the Pomodoro technique -- looks interesting, and might be a way to shake you out of a rut.
• Jen contributes a CHE post on summer writing bootcamps

And finally: Frogprincess weighs in with a recommendation for Netflix instant, "for those 15 minute breaks we all need." Movies aren't my preferred writing reward (it takes me out of whatever flow I've established), but do make sure to plan in short breaks and rewards – whatever moves you forward without setting you back.


**And those of you who are using Scrivener – have you figured out how to get it to rotate pdfs in your "research" folder? Some of my Interlibrary pdfs arrive scanned sideways, and the inability to view them right-side-up in Scrivener is bugging the crap out of me.

Headdesk: A Timeline

T-minus 6 months: As part of an overly ambitious post-tenure career plan, agree to take on major project for outside organization: I am to Revise the Thing, a process that involves a new format, new content, new mechanism for dissemination -- and, like most academic projects, no budget or staff (though other organization members have been generous in making sure I have whatever materials and guidance they can provide).

T-minus 4 - 2 months: Figure out content for the Thing. Worry that I don't have enough, or that it potentially sucks. For the first time in the history of academia, receive promised contributions from outside contributors well ahead of schedule. [?!?] Lapse into false sense of security.

T-minus 2 months: Realize that I need to figure out a design for the Thing. Find software to make it work. Figure out software. Sink back into sloth.

T-minus 2 weeks: Realize that deadline is approaching and, in a burst of activity, get the Thing three-quarters done, then procrastinate for several weeks, letting the guilt build up to critical mass, until...

Liftoff!: Finally finish the Thing (about a month behind schedule) and make it available to organization people.

2 hrs later: Read and respond to two notices (out of 400 recipients) reporting the same minor technical glitch that appears to have occurred in the dissemination phase.** Deduce from the evidence that the problem is likely technology-related, user's end (since the issue appears to have only affected a few individuals rather than everyone), and provide a one-click solution.

24 hrs later: Receive terse one-line e-mail from one of the two correspondents (the other had no problem viewing the Thing once I resolved the issue) explaining that since s/he still can't view the Thing, s/he will be forced to cancel hir organization membership.

::headdesk::


**to be fair to myself, this was balanced out by half a dozen e-mails received in the first 24 hours, congratulating me on what a good job I'd done with The Thing.

Tech for Writers (A "random bullets" post)

• I've been using Zotero for about a year now to organize my bibliography, as well as notes on stuff I have already read. I like the interface, and am slowly (manually) migrating my massive database that I created in grad school in Filemaker Pro. So far, I use it to organize bibliography (including a place to store and organize references to books and articles I haven't read), and attach notes on things I have read, as well as copies of articles. Haven't posted it all to the cloud yet, but I will. But I can't help thinking that there are other things I'm missing.
• After several years of Mac fanatics (I'm a fan, but not a fanatic) urging me to get iWork, I did. This, after a really bad experience in grad school with Mac's first office suite, the odious "Apple Works." I like keynote fine, and pages has a nifty layout or two for newsletters & the like. I can even understand numbers, which is much more intuitive than Excel, in my opinion. But I can't imagine why some of my academic friends are singing the praises of a word-processing software that has no button to insert a footnote.
  
• Scrivener. I've been hearing lots about this, and since I'm at the beginning of a project, now would be the time. Also, since I'm at the beginning of a semester. It looks cool, and I'll probably download the free trial to check it out. Anyone out there using this? Thoughts?
• Also thinking about downloading MacFreedom, which will shut off my internet access at prearranged times. I hate to pay 10 bucks for something I should be able to do myself, but apparently I'm incapable.
  

::gasp!::

Right after I post this, I will be dropping off my laptop for repairs.

It is my only computer.

Let's see how an academic gets along without her computer during the last couple of weeks before the semester. Should be entertaining, no?

(And yes, I did take the precaution of backing everything up just an hour ago.)




...or... maybe not. It seems that the part still hasn't arrived. Now what am I going to do with all this separation trauma I got ready?

Single-Tasking (or trying to)

So, don't we all (we who teach, that is) tell our students not to try to multi-task? Don't we tell them that this is the reason that we don't want them checking their Facebook pages or texting in class – because they think they can multitask, but they really can't? They just end up doing a crappy job at two things at once? And isn't multitasking, in a way, disrespectful to whatever it is you're trying to do, whether it's participating in class, or listening to a friend talk, or working on a paper?

Yeah. Well, It Has Come to My Attention that I suck at practicing what I preach. My brain is always zipping off in several directions at once, and few of those directions are conducive to productivity or even happiness. And I've noticed that I'm not really inhabiting my own life.

So, inspired by two friends (one of them the fabulous Dr. S., who comments here occasionally), I've started meditating in the mornings. I'm still not very good at it, or even very consistent. But I'm working on it. That whole "being in the moment" thing.

More importantly, as of this morning, I am taking a break (of as-yet-undetermined duration) from a Certain Social Networking Website. More than sucking up my time, it also appears to have substituted for real communication: I've found myself narrating my life rather than living it, and making oh-so-clever pronouncements and witty rejoinders rather than having actual conversations where I talk and listen.

I'll still be blogging, and reading other people's blogs, because I enjoy the long format and the possibilities for real conversation. And I'll still be posting my photos on another website. But other than that, it's time to shift the focus a bit.

And today, after the archive, I walked into a grove of fruit-bearing trees in an unlikely place, and they were in bloom, and I had never smelled anything like that in my life, and I was fully, unequivocally there.

Here's a picture of life on the slow track:

A Day in the Archives, Part 3: Okay, so I have a honkin' huge stack of documents. Now what?

Well, first off, contrary to what you've seen in the movies, you probably will not be asked to don a pair of white cotton gloves.** I wouldn't be surprised if people in conservation work with gloves (though they're more likely latex, to avoid leaving fibers), and I'm only speaking from my experience and that of my friends, but no gloves. In fact, in many archives, you (especially if you're North American) may be astonished at the casualness with which centuries-old documents are handled – my main archive sets a stack on your table with an audible thump. Another archivist (small parish archive) invited me to climb a twelve-foot high rolling ladder to grab the (late medieval) registers I wanted for myself. I've heard many tales of archivists in small archives, both in Europe and Latin America, making you a copy of the documents you want by taking the register, opening it to the page you want, and smashing it flat on the platen of the photocopier, just like you might with a book that wasn't centuries old and crumbling to dust. Eeep!

Anyway, you may have a list of references of particular pages or folios you want to look at, but more likely you'll be leafing through codices, rolls, or stacks of loose documents looking for something on your topic. When you find it, you have two choices: transcribe it then and there, or get a copy to take home. Let's talk about each one in turn.

First, there's transcribing. This has the advantage that you can see some things that don't turn up in the reproductions. For medievalists, the most important thing that this allows you to do is look at faded portions of document. Here's the bottom third of the one I showed you the other day:

fig. 1: argh!

Now, of course, you can't do anything about the missing chunks. But the faded bits are moisture damage (brought on by storage in too-humid areas for too long), and that you can do something about, provided you have the original in front of you. Go to the desk, and ask for an ultraviolet light (known as a "black light" back in the day when some of us were considerably more interesting). If you shine it on the faded bits, they can pop right up. In fact, if you have a document where parts are faded, it's worth shining it on bits that seem totally blank, because sometimes they're not.

Of course, the disadvantage of transcribing on-site is that it takes time, and you can't check your work later. And since a lot of North American researchers only have 1-3 months at a time in the archives, we generally go for option 2, which is to get a copy of the document. How this works varies widely from one archive to another. In many archives, you will be offered (and charged for) photocopies, microfilms, or (saints preserve us) photocopies of microfilm. In others, you will be offered a disk of digital images (also at a charge, usually a small flat fee for the disk, plus a modest per-document fee). The smaller archives are advantageous here, because since they don't have the resources to make (and charge for!) copies, they simply tell you to bring in your camera and take your own copies.

I love those archives.

Now, as you know, I'm a bit of a shutterbug. And there are better and worse digital photos. Archivists have whole setups where the camera is in a fixed frame directly above the document, the ambient light is set just so, etcetera, etcetera. But I'm here to tell you that you can get perfectly acceptable (if not perfect-perfect) digital photos of documents with a $150 point-and-shoot digital camera. Here's the steps:

• Ask if digital photography is allowed. Important step here, folks.
  
• TURN YOUR FLASH OFF, and check that it's still off each time you turn the camera off and on again. This preserves the documents, and your access to the documents. Wanna become persona non grata at an archive? Take a flash photo.
• If your camera allows you to manually set the ISO (and even the slightly-more-than-basic ones do today), set it as low as possible – usually 100 or even 80. This lets less light in to the sensor, but higher ISO values result in graininess, especially with smaller cameras. Grain can be artsy in recreational photography, but awful if you want a clear image of already unclear letters.
• With your ISO set as low as possible, put your camera in shutter speed mode (also sometimes called "time value" mode on Canons, I think), and set the speed. Slower speeds let in more light, but if your camera doesn't have a "vibration reduction" feature (and most point-and-shoot cameras don't), you don't want the shutter speed to be slower than about 1/60 of a second. With these two things set, your camera should determine a good aperture value on its own.
• (If your camera doesn't have fancy functions, leave it in auto, WITHOUT FLASH, and hope for the best. You'll usually be okay, provided you have good illumination).
  
• Hold the camera facing straight down over the top of the thing you're photographing. This means that you take your photos standing up, rather than seated in your chair. But shooting from an angle will give you a keystone effect, which at its worst can distort what you're trying to read. Once you're in place, make sure that your own body isn't casting a shadow on the thing you're photographing, and adjust your body and your light source accordingly.
  
• Take a normal breath, focus the camera, exhale gently, then press the shutter button down, holding it down until your picture is taken. Both breathing and letting go of the shutter button ever so slightly jar the camera body, so this is a good and easy trick.
  

If you are fortunate enough to be shooting with a DSLR, see if there's a setting in which it shoots in RAW format, rather than JPG. When it's dragged to your desktop, it will usually convert back to JPG, but RAW stores more information per shot – almost twice as much. For analyzing documents, this is a very good thing. It takes more storage space, but isn't it worth it?

fig. 2: you don't need super high-tech, but you need *some* tech

Here's another handy tip: Make a little slip with the exact reference number you'd have in a footnote, and make sure it's legible in the photo (I've cropped mine out of the photo above, but you can bet it's there. That way, if your files get all topsy-turvy, you'll still know what you've got where.

Now, I'm going to sign off on this topic (for now), but if y'all have a part 4 you want, let me know. And don't forget to read the comments, because we've now got a lot of archivists following this thread, and I'm sure they'll have stuff to add.

Have fun -- and don't forget your backups!


**Unless you're in a photographic archive -- thanks to my archivist-commenters for pointing out the distinction.

WorldCat: A mini-rant [UPDATED!]

As a researcher, one of the databases I depend on most is WorldCat -- the ginormous international repository for publication information on every book and serial available in just about any library, anywhere. It takes a few hours of fiddling with it the first time you use it in order to learn its quirks, tricks, and shortcuts, but once you do, you can find anything.

Then, this morning, I woke up to a new, "simplified" version that has transformed it from a precision tool into a blunt instrument. I believe that the phrase that my fourteenth-century documents would use to describe my feelings about this, after only 90 seconds of use, is odio capitale.

I am not amused.

UPDATE: Check out the comments section for the response of someone who seems to be affiliated with the WorldCat team. I am impressed.

First Week: The Good and the Bad

I have made it through the first week of my first semester as a tenured proffie. It doesn't feel that different: I still share an office, I still have to do pretty much all the same things I had to before. But here's the good news/bad news round-up:

GOOD: My classes all had sufficient enrollments not to be canceled, but not so much as to be oppressive. Manageable class sizes. And the students seem enthusiastic. One even came up after class and told me that she'd been looking forward to taking the class because her best friend had told her that my classes were great.

BAD: I gave students in one class a massive first-week assignment on Tuesday, due Thursday, but somehow thought I had posted the readings when I hadn't. A combination of factors meant that I didn't get the students' frantic e-mails until 10 p.m. the night before the assignment was due. So I had to push back the assignment, and I came off looking a bit disorganized.

GOOD: I downloaded some freeware, and can now extract clips from commercial DVDs, save them to my hard drive, and embed them in powerpoint** presentations (short clips only + classroom use only = Fair Use under copyright law), so I don't have to be constantly switching media during class. Used it in class for the first time today, and it worked perfectly. I am enthused.

BAD: The faculty got a notice yesterday that next year's competition for research-related course releases will be canceled, due to budget shortfalls. My official teaching load is 4-4, but course releases get almost everybody down to a 3-3. Until now.

GOOD: I got a shiny new laptop from my employer, to replace the old one that has suffered four years of heavy use, crumbs dropping into the keyboard, and two falls off the back of my bike. Budget problems mean that for the next year or two, the computer refresh program will be severely restricted, so I got this one just in time.

BAD: I have another hole in my office window.

GOOD: I have acquired a writing buddy in the department, and we're going to be working on getting a draft of an article each this semester. He's smart, and motivated, so I think it'll be great.

I am cautiously optimistic.


**I am a mac user, and bought their office suite while in Puddletown this summer. So, I'll soon be taking Keynote out for a spin.

Glory Hallelujah (third in a series of three tech crisis posts)

The power source/AC adapter is indeed fried.

The motherboard and hard drive are not.

I have a new adapter. All is well. Now, if you´ll excuse me, I´m going home to watch an espisode of Lost on my fully functional computer.

Update on the Computer Meltdown

First order of business: the recent passing of my laptop means that I can´t check my e-mail on any of my dot-mac aliases, including the NotoriousPhD one. So if you need to contact me, you should do so via my work e-mail (which you can get by looking me up at my employer´s website, and if you don´t know who I am, then sit tight and be confident that I will be reading your e-mail as soon as I´m home).

Second: Thanks for the sympathy on the last post. No need to pick up a laptop for research. I´ll just do it with pen and paper like I did that time three years ago when I was in the same city and my computer got stolen (yes, I do seem to have some bad luck here).

The problem is not the box -- I was planning on getting a new one next month anyway. The problem is the data that´s on it. Unless I can find someone to fix it (and I am checking into this, by the way) and/or do data recovery, I´m stuck like this for the next month. I miss my data. And I miss having a little music in the morning and at night. ::sigh::

I´ve already e-mailed FabEd´s assistant to ask her to send me copies of the readers´reports, because there were two documents I was supposed to check on. And I hope to whatever gods there are that none of the files got corrupted in the backup process. But other than that, there´s little I can do, other than to more forward.

So... wish me luck!

In which Yours Truly is well and truly screwed

Yes, I made it to exotic research city.

Yes, I made it to my apartment fine.

Yes, I am jet-lagged.

But most importantly, my first act upon arriving in the apartment was to take the computer out of the laptop to plug it in and charge the battery... and promptly fry the hard drive.

No file access. No secondary e-mail account. No Lost videos.

No computer. For a month. Research on a legal pad.

Thank god I backed up my files (including my book MS!) before I left. Thank god I printed out the information most critical to my research trip.

But damn. This sucks.

Secret Identity Revealed!

Well, sort of. I just sent a professional e-mail to four colleagues (in the field, not in my department), and accidentally sent it from my blog account. ::sigh::

So, if you're one of these four people, can you keep it between us? My book contract and tenure & promotion are not, after all, in the bag quite yet. I'd totally do the same for you. kthxbye.

To Facebook, or not to Facebook?

Over at Prone to Laughter, Dance has a post about Facebook and its discontents -- specifically, on professors' concerns about keeping up boundaries between personal networking and professional life.

I've had a couple of non-academic friends badgering me to get on the bus, and I've been figuring that sooner or later I'd have to surrender to the inevitable. I've been toying with the idea of doing it over spring break. But I've been reluctant, for two reasons: first, the aforementioned concerns about boundaries, and second, the time-suck potential. So I'd like to solicit opinions out there. What have been your experiences? On the whole, a good thing or a bad thing? Or perhaps a necessary evil? How do you get the benefits without paying too many of the costs?