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Institutional and Association Blogs

It's not just individual Filipino librarians who are blogging now. The institutional and association blogs listed below are the ones I know about. I have featured some of them before, but others are relatively new or I never got around to writing about them. Some are official library blogs, while others are advocacy or even supplier blogs.

Aklatang Pambata Online
I doubt if there are many in Philippine librarianship who have not heard of or read about Troy Lacsamana and Aklatang Pambata.
ASLP online
The blog of the Association of Special Libraries of the Philippines (ASLP) is hosted by Arnold Zafra, who seems to be doing it pro bono.
Bayan Akayin Sa Abot-Tanaw (BASA)
Basa is the Tagalog word for "read." It's interesting that the driving force behind BASA is not a librarian, but Fr. Ted Gonzales, SJ.
EISI News
It used to be that Electronic Information Solutions, Inc. (EISI) relied more on a traditional website. Now its blog is its website.
Filipino American Library Blog Spot
The Filipino American Library has a website, a MySpace account and a blog. Wow!
What's New at the IRRI Library
The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) library's blog is also available as a Bloglines blog, which actually came before the one on Blogger.
PLAI-Southern Tagalog Region Librarians Council (STRLC)
Like the Philippine Librarians Association, Inc. (PLAI), PLAI-STRLC does not have a traditional website, but unlike PLAI, it has a blog and is actually using it to share conference presentations.
PNU-LIS Updates
The PNU Library and Information Science Alumni Association (PNU-LISAA) hasn't been updated since December 2005, but now that Peachy Limpin is blogging again (from Australia!), maybe some new posts will be forthcoming.
UP Library Bulletin
The official newsletter of the University of the Philippines Library System now has an online version. Perhaps other libraries will soon follow? =)
Unfortunately, not all of these blogs are updated regularly. But thanks to Jenny Levine and FeedBurner, I've put together a page on Institutions that will be updated whenever any of the blogs above are updated. Alternatively, you can also subscribe to the RSS feed.


Category: Biblioblogosphere

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Job Openings and Career Development

There's a new Filipino Librarian blog: Job Openings and Career Development. Unlike this blog, the new one will be oriented more toward librarians and their professional development:

If the original Filipino Librarian is the opinion page, then this blog is the classified ads section. Except for the summaries of each post, all posts will appear as they were written by the original authors. Please do not contact me for more information because I don't have any. If you have any suggestions or would like to publicize a job opening or event, email me at von.totanes @ gmail.com.
Thanks to J. Angelo Racoma for making the new blog possible.


Category: About Filipino Librarian

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One Fine Day

My life came together in a very unique way today.

At 10 am, I met with my adviser as a PhD student. As a librarian, I attended a lecture at 12 noon by the president of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). At 2:30 pm, I listened—as a Filipino—to a political scientist discuss volatility in the Philippines.

From there, I hurried to catch the rest of a talk about Michael of Rhodes that began at 4:30 pm, and which was important to me as a student of book history. Finally, I attended Barbra Streisand's concert tonight as a fan =)


Create Your Own!

Pat Fleming, my adviser, said that I was on the right track with what I was doing for my dissertation. Alex Byrne, president of IFLA, wondered why copyrights are extended at around the same time the ones for Mickey Mouse expire. And David McGee suggested that Michael of Rhodes used his legendary manuscript to win votes among passengers who didn't have much to do on board a ship.

It was a bit embarrassing listening to Paul Hutchcroft talk about "Political Volatility in the Philippines: Origins of Crisis, Prospects for Reform" because the circus that's been going on in our country sounds especially absurd when seen in the company of non-Filipinos. Except for a not-exactly-wrong reference to "fall of 2005," I couldn't really say that he said anything wrong. But I had to speak up when someone asked about what's going to happen until 2010, and another commented on the Manila-centric presentation.

I don't know if I expressed myself well enough, but what I wanted to say was that more orchestrated maneuvers and counter-maneuvers will take place but nothing much will happen because the people—including me—are sick of politics. Life goes on, as the could-be-better-but-not-bad state of the economy will attest. And the same is true for those in the provinces—they're sick of politics in Manila, too.

Then there was Barbra Streisand. I "met" her in first-year high school because Mr. Pagsi couldn't stop talking about her "One Voice" concert, which he saw on laser disc. I turned into a fan of her music (mostly the Broadway albums) and concerts over the years, but not her movies.

So when I found out Toronto was going to be one of two non-American cities on her tour, I decided that I'd watch her live in concert if I could get a cheap-enough ticket. I did get a ticket, but I took the warnings seriously and didn't bring my camera. And that's why it's a poster up there, and not a view from my almost-nosebleed-worthy seat.

Aside from the usual goosebumps with songs like "The Way We Were," "People" and "Somewhere," I found the use of a few lines of "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught" (South Pacific) as an intro to "Children Will Listen" (Into the Woods) very effective. Streisand's also still very much a funny girl. I haven't been to too many concerts, but I don't remember laughing as much as I did at this one.

I don't quite know why all these happened on this one day. But I suppose it's a sign that I'm in the right place =)


Category: About Vonjobi

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i-Conference 2006: Epilogue

The official audio recordings, session notes and photos should be up soon, but in the meantime, you may want to check all the other posts about i-Conference 2006:
Social Life of Information: Intellectual Responsibility, Wired, i-Conference Doctoral Colloquium
SI504: iSchool Conference Google Book Session
digital curry: i school conference : google book project
eighty-eight empires: The Cost of Failure
iSchools Thesis Research: i-Conference 2006
I'm not quite sure what the scarcity of posts means, but it seems that there weren't too many bloggers at the conference.

The following are photos of the unique giveaway each participant received (the conference schedule is on the other side) and the Qwizdom device used at the closing session that allowed the organizers to survey the participants a la "Who Wants to be a Millionaire."

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i-Conference 2006:
Christine Borgman on the Scholarly Information Infrastructure

Christine BorgmanIn "Disciplines, Documents, and Data: Convergence and Divergence in the Scholarly Information Infrastructure," Christine Borgman (UCLA) provided an overview of her forthcoming book Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet (2007). While the other two plenary sessions were good, it was the one with Borgman that I found most relevant to me as a PhD student, librarian and freelance editor.

The fact that she cited websites and not scholarly works as examples is indicative, in my opinion, of the future of scholarly communication. Some of the websites were:
Sloan Digital Sky Survey
Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology
Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative
She mentioned the usual technical definition of "data"—"reinterpretable representation of information in a formalized manner suitable for communication, interpretation or processing" (Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System [pdf], 2002)—as an introduction to the socio-technical definition: "alleged evidence" (Buckland, 2006). She then made the point that data needs to be interpreted, analyzed, etc.

Borgman discussed the disciplinary differences between science, social science, and the humanities, and how the data used in the three fields vary greatly. Memorable quote from her friend: "The plural of anecdote is not data." She also talked about incentives to share data (i.e., tradition of "open science"; collaboration; reciprocity; recognition; coercion) and incentives not to share (i.e., rewards are for publication, not data management; effort to document data; competition, priority of claims; intellectual property).

Do scholars share more now? According to Borgman, it depends on the field, but even with arXiv as the poster child for open access and evidence that self-archived articles get cited more, less than 4 percent of publications that should have been archived in PubMed Central are actually available online at this time.

While there is quite a bit of resistance now, I believe that open access journals will eventually be the norm. It may take a decade and some legislation, but it will happen. That should make things easier for publishers and authors in developing countries like the Philippines. But there's another problem: not too many Filipinos are doing research...


Category: i-Conference 2006

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Support for Library Hub Continues

In line with the thrust of the Department of Education (DepEd) to make every Filipino child a reader by grade three, Secretary Jesli Lapus has pushed for the establishment of library hubs nationwide.

"Education chief pushes for establishment of library hubs"
(Sun.Star Manila, 15 October 2006)

It's good to know that Jesli Lapus, the new DepEd secretary, supports Library Hub. It's interesting, however, that the press release does not mention former undersecretary Miguel Luz at all.


Category: Libraries—Public Schools

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i-Conference 2006:
Filipino PhD Students

Filipino PhD Students

From left: Mayette Rivera, Fr. Denny Toledo, Ricky Punzalan, and me.
Click on the photo to see a larger version.

I thought Ricky Punzalan and I would be the only Filipinos at i-Conference 2006. But I was happy to learn that I was wrong. It's just too bad that the only time we were all together was for the photo above.

Individual info is as follows:

Ma. Theresa "Mayette" M. Rivera
University of the Philippines
"The Old and the New Media: Community Communication and Citizen Participation in a Tri-cultural Community in Upi, Maguindanao"
Dissertation grant recipient, Fulbright CHED-MAEP

Ramon Prudencio "Denny" S. Toledo, SJ
Drexel University
"Negotiation in Online Collaborative Mathematics Problem-solving"

Ricardo "Ricky" S. Punzalan
University of Michigan
"Culion Leprosy Patient Records: Manifestations of Segregation and Colonial Control"

Vernon "Von" R. Totanes
University of Toronto
"History of the Filipino History Book in the Twentieth Century"
Note: All dissertation titles are tentative.


Category: i-Conference 2006

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i-Conference 2006:
Digital Libraries as Collaborative Spaces

Dagobert Soergel (Maryland) opened the session "Digital Libraries as Collaborative Structured Information Spaces" with some unique housekeeping matters (e.g., email your questions!) and pointing to the downloadable slides (ppt). He dispensed with introductions and just showed the names of the panelists on a slide: Gary Marchionini (North Carolina) Michael Twidale (Illinois), Christine Borgman (UCLA), Ann Weeks (Maryland), Judith Klavans (Maryland).

Marchionini talked about digital libraries (DL) as "sharium" (i.e., A virtual workspace with rich content and powerful tools where people can work independently or collaborate with each other...). Twidale discussed how DL access structures can facilitate and be facilitated by collaboration. Very interesting: If we build it they will come. We built it - they didn't come - why not? They came & built it themselves. Aside from the usual examples (e.g., Flickr), he also referred to Google's PageRank as a product of implicit collaboration, and the Art Museum Social Tagging Project.

Borgman used her work on the Alexandria Digital Earth ProtoType as an example of how DLs can be used in education and the research issues involved (including "We built it and they didn't come"). Weeks spoke about DL-based collaboration in the context of the International Children's Digital Library. And it has, in fact, come a long way since I last wrote about it.

Klavans shared her experience with DLs and humanities computing involving text and images. Her project on Computational Linguistics for Metadata Building may not compare favorably with Google Images on the keyword "madonna," but since its focus is on exhibition catalogs, textbooks and scholarly journal articles, there's really no sense making the comparison.

Finally, I'm glad that I didn't get so discouraged after the last session and decide to skip this session. Libraries do, in fact, have a place in a flat world.

[5:49 pm] An interesting answer was made in reply to a question asked regarding the use of games in DLs (e.g., Peekaboom). The "Henry Ford" model refers to taking an expensive product and producing it cheaply, while the "Tom Sawyer" model involves portraying fence-painting as fun and getting other people to do the work for you for free. Which one is more prevalent online? =)


Category: i-Conference 2006

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i-Conference 2006:
iSchools in a Flat World

Ronald Larsen (Pittsburgh) started the session on "iSchools in a Flat World" by referring to Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat and positioning iSchools in the 21st century. He then introduced Raymond von Dran (Syracuse), Shalini Urs (Mysore, India) and Martin Weiss (Pittsburgh). Unfortunately, two speakers from India and China were not able to make it.

Von Dran talked about his school's experience offering online courses at a Toronto university that was scuttled by regulatory policies across the border. And then he told his own recent story about flying from New York to China to keynote a conference and getting sent back because his visa was "improper." Finally, he talked a little about the Wise Consortium.

Urs began with a map showing exactly where Mysore is. She then provided an introduction to the Mysore-based, online International School of Information Management (ISIM), and explained why the cluster approach and collaboration are important to ISIM. Eventually, she ran through the who, what, where, when of ISIM. Classes start next year.

Weiss reported on his school's experiment with offering an online course in collaboration with the Beijing Institute of Technology, and covered similar ground as Urs, except that he was talking in the past tense.

Based on the non-mention of the word "library" since the session started, it does not seem as if libraries and librarians are going to be part of iSchools in a flat world. In fact, except for a session about digital libraries later, the sessions I've attended and the remaining sessions seem to emphasize the iSchools' drift away from libraries.


Category: i-Conference 2006

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i-Conference 2006:
Emerging Research Agenda

AnnaLee Saxenian (UC Berkeley) started with a few words on "Services: Science, Management, and Engineering Emerging Research Agenda for iSchools," and introduced the panelists: Steve Sawyer (Penn State), Eric Yu (Toronto) and Robert Glushko (UC Berkeley).

Sawyer talked about five points in the context of real estate transactions: interdependence, co-creation, distribution, intangibility, and contextualization. [It's not entirely clear that I got all his points because after the third point, he just kept saying "next point" even after the fifth one. He summarized at the end, but the points seemed to be different from the ones I got. Slides would have been helpful.] Best story: real estate agents now work mostly from their cell phones, and ask their children to manage their websites... and some have recalled their kids from school when the website went down.

Yu discussed "The other 'Service' movement," which referred to a service orientation in computing, and whether iSchools should be involved in this movement. Services, he said with tongue in cheek, are being transformed by adding an "e" to words like "health," "business" and "museums." He then defined service-oriented computing (SOC), cited Google Maps as an example, and made a good point about how systems should be designed with interconnection in mind, and not built first then try to figure out how to connect them. He ended by summarizing: SOC is a major movent today, and iSchools must engage deeply in shaping it.

Glushko focused on "Bridging the 'Back Stage' and 'Front Stage' in Service Systems," and spoke specifically about how "service" is taught in school. Rather than emphasizing differences in service delivery methods, he'd rather emphasize what they have in common: service providers and consumers. [Aside: There was a problem with maximizing a webpage on the Mac, and he said that he hadn't used PowerPoint in four years. I suppose the problem illustrates his point about the back and front stages, but if we think of him as the provider and his audience as the customer, maybe he should have spent time with the software before using it.] He went on to say that there is a need to resolve the tension between the back and front stages, and ended with the role the iSchools can play in the resolution.


Category: i-Conference 2006

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i-Conference 2006:
Chris Anderson and a Long Tail Problem

[8:56 am] Is there "A Problem with the Long Tail"? If you'd like to hear Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, talk about this problem, the session is available via video streaming. The session starts in a few minutes.

[11:05 am] The wireless connection disappeared for the entire length of Anderson's talk. Photos and commentary will be posted later. I'm now at another session...

[2:20 pm] Photos of the slides below are posted with Anderson's permission. If you'd like to understand the not-so-clear text, come back in a few hours. I'll probably have the commentary up by then. On my way to another session...


Create Your Own!

[10:16 pm] Anderson began with a summary of his book. Things that stuck out? He mentioned that the Church used to be very powerful with a very small catalog—the Bible. And then he highlighted N'Sync's "No Strings Attached" album in 2000, which he said set the record for most number of units sold, and added that it will never be beaten.

But what's a "long tail"? This refers to the part of a graph that people don't usually pay attention to. In monetary terms, the long tail refers to the sales generated from products that only a few people buy. So what's the fuss all about? Well, lately, sales from the long tail add up to quite a lot, even beating sales of heavily-advertised blockbusters.

Examples: online businesses like Rhapsody, Netflix, Amazon, which make more money on the total sales of many slow-selling titles vs here-today, gone-tomorrow blockbusters; and non-traditional media like blogs, where the likes of BoingBoing are beginning to get more hits than the more traditional CBS News. Natural occurrences like earthquakes also have a long tail, i.e., very destructive earthquakes are very few, while lots of smaller, non-destructive earthquakes take place every day.

The problem he identified was rather technical and had to do with power laws vs lognormal distributions. If this weren't so long already and I weren't too tired, I might think of a way to simplify, so I'll just move on to the last part =)

It appears that there are actually two long tails: the one based on appeal (those with broad appeal make the headlines, but there are more of those with narrow appeal limited to niche markets), and the one that involves age (there tends to be a higher demand for newer titles, but the aggregate sales for older titles brings in more money).

Then he talked about rights, which he called the "elephant in the room." He cited the movie Tarnation, which was made for $218, but could not be shown until the rights to the songs used in the movie were cleared—at a cost of $450,000. The point? More could benefit from the long tail, and not just financially, if the process of obtaining copyright clearances were simpler.

I'm probably getting some of this wrong already, so I should probably just encourage you—if you got this far—to just wait for the audio. And maybe reflecting on his closing words will help: "Small is the new big. Many is the new few."

For more information about Chris Anderson and the long tail, check out his blog.


Category: i-Conference 2006

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Plagiarism... Again?

Can someone please take a look at this and this? As far as I can tell, there is no difference between the texts of the former and the latter, except for the dates (9 August 2006 vs 28 September 2006) and the authors (ust_4elsm vs vonjobi).

Maybe I'm the plagiarist? Maybe I didn't know I was copying somebody else's work without giving credit to the author? Well, aside from the fact that my post has links, there's also the fact that the first issue of Library Student Journal only came out in September.

I don't really know what's going on, but I just hope this doesn't leave as bad a taste in the mouth as the last one.


Category: About Filipino Librarian

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i-Conference 2006:
John Seely Brown on the Networked Age

John Seely Brown on the Networked AgeIn "Learning Reconceived for the Networked Age," John Seely Brown (JSB) started by discussing "enfolding binaries" and "preparing students for career trajectories, not fixed careers" (see photo below).

John Seely Brown on enfolding binaries
He then referred to the architecture studio, where work in progress is public—unlike research in academy, which has to be "finished" before publication—to illustrate what he meant.

He differentiated between "learning about" and "learning to be," which seems to be similar to the difference between telling a man how to catch fish, and letting him learn to catch fish by doing it himself. Other examples: the open source movement, Decameron Web, open and closed peer review at Nature, MediaCommons, etc.

I'm going to stop here now because I think I'm missing too much. If you'd like to listen to JSB yourself, watch the i-Conference 2006 website. The audio should be up within the week. Actually, video streaming is also available. And will be available for the other featured speakers.

For more information about JSB, check out his website.


Category: i-Conference 2006

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i-Conference 2006:
Google Book Search at U-M

Maybe you've heard of the B-schools (business schools), but have you heard of iSchools (information schools)? Perhaps the B-schools had something to do with the name, but maybe the iPod had something to do with it, too.

Today, i-Conference 2006 (iCon) begins at the University of Michigan (U-M). In a few hours, iCon will open officially, but a pre-conference session about the "U-M Digital Library Initiatives and the Google Book Search Project" has just begun, with speakers John Wilkin and Perry Willett.
Create Your Own!

Wilkin started by talking about the genesis of Google Book Search at U-M, and eventually got around to the secrecy regarding the technology and numbers surrounding the project. He mentioned that he understood why Google wants to keep these secret, but added that permission has been obtained to talk about certain aspects of the project.

The target is to digitize 7 million volumes in 6 years. They are now processing 30,000 volumes in a week, which is not atypical. Before Google became involved, they were processing 9,000 volumes—in one year.

Willett is now walking us through the back-and-forth involved between U-M and Google, and showing us how the books digitized may be accessed through Google Book Search and U-M's Mirlyn catalog, whether in full text, as a downloadable file, or identifying how many times a word appears in a book. The most striking thing is that Google and U-M provide different ways of searching books from the U-M collection.

For more information about Google Book Search at U-M, see "Michigan Digitization Project" and "Google Library Partnership."


Category: i-Conference 2006

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Filipino American Library Gala

Filipino American Library Gala
Today, the Black Eyed Peas’ Allan Pineda Lindo (a.k.a. apl.de.ap), Tia Carrere (Wayne’s World), Lou Diamond Phillips (La Bamba), Cheryl Burke ("Dancing with the Stars”), Angela Perez Baraquio (Miss America 2001), and Camile Velasco ("American Idol," Season 3), will be at the 6th Annual Spirit Awards and Dinner Benefit Gala in Los Angeles, California.

And who will the beneficiary be? The Filipino American Library (FAL).

As far as I know, this kind of fundraising has not been done for any library in the Philippines. (Please leave a comment below if a star-studded event for the benefit of a Filipino library has been held before.) Could it be that celebrities don't want to be associated with libraries? It is more likely, in my opinion, that no one ever asked them.

I've written before about marketing and leadership, and in this case, the marketing and leadership seem to be quite good. Florante Ibanez, who obtained his MLIS at UCLA this year, is identified as "Webmaster," but it was he who applied for—and was given—a 2004 Community Partnership Grant to "develop and maintain a new enhanced and interactive website... [so that] potential library patrons and researchers would be tempted to visit the physical site."

I suppose Ibanez (whom I do not know and have never met) will say that it was a group effort, but from what I've seen, it was when he came into the picture that things started to happen. But it does look like a group effort because the community seems to be very actively involved. And it's not just composed of the older generation as seen in the fact that FAL is on MySpace (check out the video!).

Then there's "Filipinotown Branches Out With Its Library" by Wendy Leung (AsianWeek, 8 September 2006), which was the cover story and points out that unlike "other Asian immigrants, Filipinos have the English language skills that lead to quicker assimilation to mainstream culture."

My usual grouse applies, though. Ibanez is named, and Elnora Tayag is identified as "curator of the library exhibit," but FAL does not seem to have a "librarian." But as usual, too, don't mind me. Go, FAL, go!


Category: Libraries

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Librarians Don't Wear Prada?

I came across the quote below via Bob Sutton's blog while doing research for my latest presentation:

It can even be "a badge of honor" to be a domineering boss in fashion or entertainment, says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a senior associate dean at Yale's School of Management. "They stir up the pot. They are agitators for change." Of Priestly's young, fear-struck assistant in "Prada," he says: "Did she think she was going to work for a librarian?"

-"'Prada' Movie Spotlights Nasty Boss Phenom" by Jocelyn Noveck (AP, 5 July 2006)
I suppose I can live with the non-threatening librarian stereotype, but there must be at least a few librarians out there who are Prada-wearing bosses from hell =)

And then there's the implication that librarians do not "stir up the pot" and are not "agitators for change." Or am I imagining things?


Category: Stereotypes

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SlideShare and Book History

SlideShare is being touted as "the YouTube of Powerpoint." And that's quite accurate. It's invitation-only at this time, but I was able to get myself invited. What you see below is my first-ever, made-in-Canada presentation. (Note: If you'd like to try SlideShare yourself, leave a comment or email me. I have ten invitations to give out.)

I uploaded my presentation slides (pdf) before on another site, along with the text (rtf). The links to the files were then shared so that my classmates could access them. But downloading a file and opening it is not as easy as SlideShare's click-on-mouse-to-move-to-next-slide.

The text is not available above, but if you visit "The Sociology of a Text" on SlideShare, I've copy-pasted the text into the comments section under the appropriate slides. This will allow you to read the text along with the slide.

I hope future enhancements will include slide notes as part of "Slide Transcript." There is some garbage on a few slides, perhaps due to the transfer from Keynote to Powerpoint, but overall, I expect to be using SlideShare more and more, and uploading pdf files less and less.

Incidentally, if you want to know more about book history (or history of the book), my presentation isn't going to be much help. You're probably better off taking a look at the journal Book History, which defines the field as "the history of the creation, dissemination, and reception of script and print."

This includes the "social, economic, and cultural history of authorship, editing, printing, the book arts, publishing, the book trade, periodicals, newspapers, ephemera, copyright, censorship, literary agents, libraries, literary criticism, canon formation, literacy, literary education, reading habits, and reader response."


Categories: Internet, About Vonjobi

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"Sexy" Librarians

sexy librariansLook closely at the photo on the right. That's not "just" a photo of an old man. That's actually an image made up of three photos of librarians from the Texas Library Association.

As "The Men of TLA: A Calendar" makes clear, they are some of the guys who will "accompany you through 2007 and half of 2008, month by month, in an exploration of the barely-seen side of TLA men." (Via LISNews)

In "Sex in the Library," I linked to stories about women librarians who posed for fundraising calendars. Well, to paraphrase a song, I guess it's my gender's turn =)

But librarians don't really have to take off their clothes to be "sexy." I find it interesting that the following items appeared in the past two weeks:

"Meet the Blograrian" by Ronald Lim (Manila Bulletin, 1 October 2006) - The featured blograrian is, of course, Zarah Gagatiga—Filipina, librarian, blogger—who says, "I’m not a techie, but if you really like what you’re doing, you’ll find ways to improve yourself." She may not be a techie, but sexy? Definitely =)
"Internet searches: Librarians do it better" by Megan Rauscher (Reuters, 1 October 2006) - The article states that, "cancer patients are more likely to find what they are looking for with a librarian-mediated search instead of 'going it alone.'" And that's not just for cancer patients. Read the next one.

"Most reliable search tool could be your librarian" by Elinor Mills (CNET News.com, 29 September 2006) - "While the Web is good for offering quick results from a broad range of sources, which may or may not be trustworthy, librarians can help people get access to more authoritative information and go deeper with their research."
While you're at it, you may as well check out the following, too. All of them—except one—don't quite present librarians as "sexy," but they provide some clues as to why librarian stereotypes persist.
"Show Your Librarian Some Love" by Todd Gilman (Chronicle of Higher Education, 3 October 2006) - The title is directed toward college professors, but the assumptions the author makes—about what some librarians do—can serve as suggestions to the other librarians who don't.

"Librarians picket film's stereotyping" (UPI, 28 September 2006) - As Steven Cohen says, "I really don't think that picketing will solve the stereotyping issue. Maybe they should have invited the crew inside [their libraries] to show them what librarians really do."

Just in time for Halloween, Target is actually selling an "Adults’ Naughty Librarian Costume." But it's for women only. And to quote Jessamyn West, "Oh my."

And then there's the intriguingly-titled, 1987 video "Betty Glover Library Workout Tape Ad." Click on the arrow below to know why undressing is not necessarily the best way to go =)



Category: Stereotypes

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Pinoy Top Blogs: September 2006

I don't know if Milenyo had anything to do with the fact that rankings on Pinoy Top Blogs (PTB) were reset a few days earlier than usual, but since the hit-counter was suspended anyway (I'm not sure why), there won't be any commentary on Unique Hits (UH) and This Month's Hits (TMH) for last month.

Instead, I'll focus on how blogs that shot up on PTB on the basis of one post last August have fared versus newcomers to the September Top 50 (some of whom seem to be SEO magicians). Traffic for basang panaginip, for instance, has fallen to a level where Rickey can already change his "Oh no! This pesky wet dream is catching up again. Where art thou Le Superstar Fabuleux?" slogan to something else. And Raincontreras.com has dropped out of the PTB 50 altogether.

Meanwhile, Mukamo, SELaplana, Pinoy BSN and Our Awesome Planet have moved up. Of the four, the first three joined PTB only last month, while the fourth has been part of PTB since last year. What do they have that others don't? An active forum, e-marketing experience, and a chatroom for the first three (not to mention search-engine-friendly posts), and authentic passion for blogging and great photos for the fourth.

If you don't even know what SEO is, it may not make sense to imitate the first three, but if you just keep on blogging about what you really love, you'll eventually find your audience. Or you can blog about what you love and then start learning what you can do to attract an audience. That's what I did with this blog and "Talumpati." I thought the hits would stop coming after Buwan ng Wika, but it looks like the need for speeches in Filipino is still going strong even though I'm not blogging as much as before.

The following are the raw data as of 26 September 2006:

AU

2
3
4
1
5
6
7
-
9
11
10
8
19
23
12
15
13
16
-
14
-
17
34
28
-
20
18
26
24
21
29
31
27
35
32
41
-
45
-
33
37
38
40
39
46
42
25
-
47
48
SE

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
NAME OF BLOG

Rickey
Bryanboy: Le Superstar Fabuleux
Motorcycle Philippines
Basang Panaginip
Pinoy Cook
laurganism.com
eRadioportal Blog
Mukamo
Inside PCIJ: Stories behind our stories
Retzwerx - Ang Inyong Pinoy Big Blogger
pinoy.rickey.org
Philippines For Men
Starmometer
Kiven
Pinoy Tech Blog
Chikadora
Leon Kilat: The Cybercafe Experiments
Blogged
SELaplana
Quezon.ph
Pinoy BSN
GPCarreon
Photojunkie
Composed Gentleman
Our Awesome Planet
Kwentong Tambay
Ellen Tordesillas
Filipino Librarian
EntrePinoy Atbp
The Sunday Punch
Macalua.com
Manila's Daily Grind
Splasher
WeddingsAtWork.com News Blog
Pinoy Travel Blog
Skirmisher
Touched by an Angel
Walk this Way
CATS ME IF YOU CAN
Notes from the Peanut Gallery
1001lives
sacha chua :: wiki
buhay sa korea
[m]channel!
Make Poverty History
Ivan About Town
Now What, Ca t?
ederic@cyberspace
Stepping on Poop
Batangbaler

Category: Blogging

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