How do I feel ambivalent about thee?

Oh, Drupal. I hardly knew ye. Really. I just don't get you.

That's because I'd have to spend months with you just to understand how to even talk to you. And then months after that for things to really work between us. And I just don't have the time, Drupal. Not now, anyway.

You're a confusing piece of work, Drupal. I managed to download a few modules, and even a theme. But did it work? No.Well, yes and no. I found the modules, I configured them, but they just sit there, stupidly, not knowing that I want them to do something. And you didn't tell them to do anything, did you, Drupal? Because I didn't know how to tell you to tell them. So my plans of allowing "Top Terms" to show users the most popular terms used on the site went up in smoke. So did the thesaurus I thought I was building with the module "Similar by Terms." They would have been useful, I think. Especially if my collection were bigger. But, it was not meant to be.

And the theme. We could have had a grand time with CleanFolio, with its professional-looking colors of green, cocoa and brown. But you ruined that, too, didn't you, Drupal?

I'm sorry.I shouldn't lash out. It was just as much your fault as mine. I don't really understand you, not like I should. Can you provide interactivity to users? Can users group and collect items into their own, personal gallery? Can you be that flexible, Drupal? If you can, maybe we can get back together some day. But for now,

see ya.

Drupal for Heroes?

I've got five items uploaded to my website.They're described per the metadata profile that I set up. (Which took way longer than I thought... isn't that always the way?) I'm honestly not sure yet if Drupal is right for my collection. I think I want users to be able to create their own hero page-- by that I mean, select objects from those I have on the website and have them appear on their own pages. So they create a mini-collection. Maybe Drupal can do this; I don't really know.

I am getting to understand Drupal a little better. I had worked with it previously and thought it was HORRIBLE but I didn't really understand that it is a content management system, not just a "website." I'm liking it much better now and do find it more intuitive, once I knew what I was dealing with. However, there is still a very negative aspect to Drupal. Whenever I hear that word, Drupal, this image pops into my head:

It's Droppo from the stupidest movie in the history of mankind: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. As you might guess, that is no hyperbole. So pity me and despise Droppo for what he has done to me.

Ice cream... or study?

I feel really good about the pacing for the tech assignments-- it's just enough to be challenging but not so much that it's stressful. This week was an anomaly for me in that I usually get my assignments done before the last minute (*cough*), but I was sort of co-opted into babysitting my nephew on Friday and went to the other nephew's birthday party on Saturday, which ate up a lot of my usual study time. However, I did partake in a very scrumptious cherry soda with vanilla ice cream at Swenson's, so maybe it was worth it.

It is a little tough for me so far to make strong connections between the management portion and the tech portion of the class, though the connections are definitely there and I think will be stronger with time.

I'm pretty anxious because I haven't done my SIRLS mid-point portfolio yet, and it's past due. I'm also anxious because it costs a lot of money to go to school, so I should hurry up, but when I graduate, will I get a job? Eeek.

But as far as the class goes, I'm enjoying it and learning from it.

Weeping and screaming

A summary of the article "Building a collection development CMS on a shoestring budget," by Regina Beach and Miqueas Dial, published in Library Hi Tech, vol. 24, no. 1, 2006.

The authors work at Texas A&M in Kingsville (TAMUK)-- a satellite of the central campus in San Antonio. The Southern Association of Colleges found deficiencies in the library system, especially regarding the availability of appropriately challenging resources. Both faculty and students felt that the curriculum was necessarily "dumbed down" as a result of the inadequate resources provided by the library.

It was decided that a Content Management System (CMS) could be implemented to help faculty and other appropriate TAMUK employees order resources more efficiently. Beach and Dial envisioned the CMS also being integrated with distance-learning instructional software, such as Blackboard, and eventually allowing instructors to use online textbooks for class.

A significant portion of the article was devoted to explaining how the CMS would improve efficiency in the technical services department of the library by reducing the number of times bibliographic data would need to be entered-- to one. This would be entered by the requester. At the time the article was written, the authors used Microsoft Access to create a relational database with resource information and user interface to order the resources. They were also concerned with compatibility; for example, they had initially wanted to use the ISBN as a unique identifier, but Baker & Taylor do not print ISBNs on their invoices.

The most significant portion of the article to me came when the authors implemented their plan and "the primary author took order cards away from the acquisitions production environment. There was literally weeping and screaming." One take away here is, as the authors point out, change is sometimes a slow and painful process. The other take away is, how much collaboration was there in this plan? How much input did the acquisitions people have? Could this plan have been implemented differently so that most people were walking with them, as opposed to digging in their heels?

Holy Heroes!

So one of our first tasks in our Advanced Digital Collections course is to collect 15-20 digital items that we'll eventually use when we build our little mini online museums/archives. (I think.) I actually had a bit of trouble deciding what to collect. I'm sure I made it more difficult than it really is, of course. As it always does, my mind eventually drifted back to-- what else?-- Star Wars, and I hit upon my theme-- heroes.

Since the day I discovered Joseph Campbell and his ideas of the hero archetype, I've been fascinated by the type of stories that, for whatever reason, belong to the human experience whatever the culture.

So, my collection idea started from there and branched out to include a pretty broad definition of heroes-- real-life heroes, ancient heroes, superheroes, and movie heroes. Songs about heroes, radio stories of heroes, pictures of heroes, videos about heroes, and stories of heroes. I even included a satire of heroes.

Here's a list of the items in my collection:

1. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech (video)
2. Editorial about sports heroes (audio)
3. Interview with "Sully" Sullenberger (radio)
4. Superman picture (image)
5. Luke Skywalker picture a la Obama "Hope" design (image)
6. Luke Skywalker picture w/ lightsaber, black background (image)
7. Luke Skywalker picture in flight suit w/lightsaber, fire background (image)
8. George Lucas discussing Joseph Campbell (video)
9. "Have Gun Will Travel" song (audio)
10. "Superfriends" (1973) opening credits (video)
11. "Superfriends" do "Office Space" (video)
12. "The Odyssey" (pdf)
13. "Clash of the Titans" movie trailer (video)
14. "Holding out for a Hero" song (audio)
15. "What is a Hero?" CBS news segment (video)
16. Subway Hero CBS news segment (video)
17. Herakles killing the Nemean Lion vase (image)
18. Hercules comic book segment (pdf)
19. "Profiles in Courage" excerpts (pdf)
20. "The Woman Who Dared" editorial cartoon of Susan B. Anthony (image)

There could be many ways to access my collection. I might use "real" and "imaginary" as descriptors. "Ancient" and "modern" could also work. Describing by format image, sound, video, document, etc. might be useful. Keywords such as "lucas," "georgelucas," "george_lucas," "star," "wars," "starwars," star_wars," "skywalker," "lukeskywalker," "luke_skywalker," etc. can get out of hand right away. I think I'd like to enable user tagging to make keyword more efficient.

As to who might access this collection, I would think teachers, schoolchildren, and anybody with an interest in heroes. It's a broad enough subject that it should appeal to many people. It's not, however, the place to do serious research.

forewarned, forearmed

This week, in reading about project management, I was amazed at the advice Make sure to have a plan. Or, more to the point, I was amazed that there was a need to give such advice. Who would attempt a project in which other people were counting on you, and not develop some sort of a plan first?

Apparently people do. Crazy people.

I was really fascinated by some of the software out there to help keep projects on time, on budget, and on track. I wish I had one of those for everyday use. I already pretty much do mental Work Breakdowns, but completely underestimate the time needed to complete the tasks.

How long will it take me to finish my homework today?

About two hours.

Wrong! PERT says twelve hours. You forgot to factor in eating, sleeping, laundry, and staring off into space at random intervals.

I think this kind of software would be invaluable to a project manager who is in charge of a lot more than just herself and her homework!

So that's what the PM wants to accomplish. The other piece of good advice from the readings this week was preparing for possible risks. I loved the idea of the "cube" in Cervone's readings, where risks can be plotted and assessed as to risk, probability, and effect. This also seems like a sensible way to prepare for possible obstacles and avoid pitfalls.

Even though there are many types of program plans, each with their own processes and sub-processes, it's worth toting around a tabbed binder with project plan details to get the project where it needs to be.

learning curve

Learning anything new is a little exciting, a little tense, and a little frustrating. I definitely felt all three as I plodded through the units-- I say plodded, because the unit learning and exercises were fine and precise, and sometimes I felt as though I was extremely clumsy, like trying to knit with mittens on. Nevertheless, I have emerged from the course knowing a lot more than I did before about what goes on underneath the user interface of a digital collection.

Even using the word underneath with more confidence is a boon-- the layers of applications, protocols, scripts, and compilers makes more sense to me. At the very least, I should be able to talk to an IT person and have a semi-intelligible conversation!

As a former schoolteacher, I pretty much involuntarily use metacognition when I'm learning something new. I can't help but take a step back and analyze how I am learning something, and where I am in the learning process. I noticed that with almost every unit, I compared my learning-- not the content, but the learning process-- to when I learned HTML. HTML is the most recent computer language I've learned (and really only one of two, the other being BASIC, a language I was somewhat traumatized by in the 9th grade).

At any rate, when I learned HTML, through a combination of self-teaching and later through a Pima class, I got to the point where the syntax and vocabulary became second nature to me. Learning CSS (I kind of threw CSS in there with HTML as one of my two computer languages) was a little easier, having had experience with HTML. I'm no expert in HTML or CSS, but I consider myself competent. I could experiment a bit, using my understanding of the syntax and vocabulary. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but I was comfortable enough to try.

Another part of my HTML/CSS learning is that when I was finished, and I loaded the page, and something was wrong, I was confident enough to understand that I had the basic principles correct in my coding, but I probably had a typo somewhere. (With CSS I allowed that I may have made a mistake, but not a gross error.)

With the information and skills we've studied in this course, I'm definitely still a novice. I haven't acquired the familiarity with the concepts to be able to experiment much, or know that my errors are probably just typos and not a misunderstanding of the material.

But, novice is on route to competence, which is what we're aiming for (if I wanted to be an expert, I'd be in a computer programming school!). And I feel as though I'm ready to tackle the similar/brand new challenges of the advanced course. Because I know that the more I work with it, just as the more I worked with HTML and CSS, the less foreign and the more familiar the concepts will be.