Learning Learning Everywhere!

Laurel Brenner... middle manager at a large public research university by weekday; MLIS grad student at all other times! This is a blog for the book-ish information-ish things that pique my interest (now also including archaeology!). Also found here are the occasional school-ish things I've done for my MLIS program through San Jose State. Home page photo by me (Spring 2012): Patience, who (along with his counterpart Fortitude) guard the New York City Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan.

[uispeccoll]

Students light up when they read a letter from the past or hold a book from centuries ago.

@uispeccoll librarian Amy Chen in Fine Books & Collections Magazine (via uispeccoll)

[random-anthropology]

'We need to re-learn our skies': Researcher studies Northern Dene view of cosmos

A new, culturally rich picture is emerging on how Northern Dene view the night sky, according to a University of Alaska PhD student documenting the oral history of astronomy in Alaska and the N.W.T.

[bookriot]

Bookish shoes.

We repeat: Bookish Shoes.

http://bookriot.com/2016/01/06/even-better-bookish-shoes-for-literary-feet/

[libraryjournal]

Your Friday fashion.  (I want those slippers!)

[archaeologicalnews]

Five missing kings and queens – and where we might find them

As 2016 begins, the recent public interest in hunting for royal burials shows no sign of abating.

Hardly has the dust begun to settle on Richard III’s expensive new tomb in Leicester than work is starting on locating the resting place of another medieval monarch, Henry I (d. 1135), in Reading (like Richard III, Henry is also thought to be under a car park).

Meanwhile, the Church of England is stoutly refusing to allow DNA tests to be carried out on bones thought to be those of the “princes in the Tower” who disappeared in 1483, and who may be buried in Westminster Abbey. 

With the honourable exception of Alfred the Great (d. 899), whose bones were – disappointingly for some – probably not found in recent Winchester excavations, this interest has tended to concentrate on the kings of England after 1066 at the expense of earlier kings, kings of British kingdoms other than England and queens. Read more.

[buffleheadcabin]

Researchers create genetic map of the British Isles

Key findings:

There was not a single “Celtic” genetic group. In fact the Celtic parts of the UK (Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Cornwall) are among the most different from each other genetically. For example, the Cornish are much more similar genetically to other English groups than they are to the Welsh or the Scots.

There are separate genetic groups in Cornwall and Devon, with a division almost exactly along the modern county boundary.

The majority of eastern, central and southern England is made up of a single, relatively homogeneous, genetic group with a significant DNA contribution from Anglo-Saxon migrations (10-40% of total ancestry). This settles a historical controversy in showing that the Anglo-Saxons intermarried with, rather than replaced, the existing populations.

The population in Orkney emerged as the most genetically distinct, with 25% of DNA coming from Norwegian ancestors. This shows clearly that the Norse Viking invasion (9th century) did not simply replace the indigenous Orkney population.

The Welsh appear more similar to the earliest settlers of Britain after the last ice age than do other people in the UK.

There is no obvious genetic signature of the Danish Vikings, who controlled large parts of England (“The Danelaw”) from the 9th century.

There is genetic evidence of the effect of the Landsker line – the boundary between English-speaking people in south-west Pembrokeshire (sometimes known as “Little England beyond Wales”) and the Welsh speakers in the rest of Wales, which persisted for almost a millennium.

The analyses suggest there was a substantial migration across the channel after the original post-ice-age settlers, but before Roman times. DNA from these migrants spread across England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, but had little impact in Wales.

Many of the genetic clusters show similar locations to the tribal groupings and kingdoms around the end of the 6th century, after the settlement of the Anglo-Saxons, suggesting these tribes and kingdoms may have maintained a regional identity for many centuries.

[libraryjournal]

Introducing public library services to people who may not have had a public library and who do not understand the concept of a public library is both exhilarating (new patrons) and overwhelming (what services will they need? Which languages do they speak?). Thankfully there are libraries that have been providing these services all along and we can look to them for guidance

[sgmudd]

A great advertisement for the University of Michigan Library’s mobile website, designed by their User Experience Department.

[nprbooks]

Airline Sets Up Free Book Vending Machines In Southeast D.C. - The Kojo Nnamdi Show

Cool idea! Kids select their age and a topic, then get a book for free.

[learninglearningeverywhere-blog]

What a fabulous thing!

[todaysdocument]

How do we volunteer to transcribe documents? Thank you

Becoming a Citizen Archivist is easy!

Create a username and password in the National Archives Catalog.

Login from any transcription page or on the login page.

Start a Transcription Mission, check out More Records, create your own mission by doing a keyword search for your favorite topics. (Or maybe you had a favorite record from one of our past posts?)

Select the “View/Add Contributions” button located below all images in the catalog.

Select the “Transcribe” tab for the page of the record you would like to transcribe.

Select the “Edit” button and remember to save your work frequently.

Check out this example transcription page and Citizen Contribution Policy for more information.

[learninglearningeverywhere-blog]

Such an awesome use of crowdsourcing!

[learninglearningeverywhere-blog]

32 Maps That Will Teach You Something New About the World

Our world is a complex network of people, places and things. Here are 32 maps will teach you something new about our diverse and interconnected planet.

So many interesting maps.  Of course, as with all data and visualizations, be careful of drawing conclusions just from these gorgeous representations.

[hoursofreading]

More tidbits I’ve found while researching

tumblr has a sad-boner for the burning of the library of alexandria

which was not actually one burning but several

and while the Library of Alexandria was an immense historical and national treasure, a lot of ppl tend to forget about the other book and library burnings that occurred in antiquity

Places like the library of Nalanda, in India, which contained an elaborate classification system to hold what was then seen as the largest collection of Buddhist literature

and the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, which contained Greek and Arabic works on mathematics and astronomy to zoology and cartography

and more recently, the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (no, that does not mean sexual witchcraft) which was burned by the Nazis b/c the majority of tomes dealt with same sex relationships and gay rights and acceptance. 

and omg, this makes me so mad. The Libraries of Fisheries and Oceans in Canada has all its collection thrown away in an attempt to save taxpayer money and on the hope that all of its material was digitized. Only 5 to 6% was.

and the Saeh library in Lebanon, which was burnt b/c of terrorism.

Book burnings are happening right now, y'all.

[wiigiwaamcore]

Not to mention how the Spanish systematically destroyed the entire literary output of whole societies in Mesoamerica, to the point where we only have a handful of their codices today

[soemily]

We should talk, too, about the heroism of those trying to save books from violence, not least because the deliberate destruction of cultural artifacts is evidence of genocide. A few libraries not mentioned above:

The National Library of Bosnia, located in Sarajevo, which was destroyed in August of 1992 by Serb forces. It was targeted with incendiary shells, and over a million books testifying to Bosnia’s multicultural history were lost in the resulting fire. Aida Buturović, a young librarian, was killed by sniper fire while trying to carry books from the burning building. The Oriental Institute, housing the majority of Sarajevo’s Islamic manuscripts, was destroyed that May, but it wasn’t the first library burnt in Sarajevo: during World War II, the Nazis decimated the collection of La Benevolencija, one of the oldest Jewish organizations in the city.

The Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu, which was burned in January 2013 by Tuareg rebel forces fleeing the city, who had been using the library as a barracks. The fire destroyed 4,000 manuscripts - but Abdel Kader Haïdara, a librarian, saved 400,000 more from libraries all over the city by smuggling them out in the preceding months. He had help, and the ‘book rustlers’ of Mali - who risked their lives to do it - saved 800 years of West African history.

[learninglearningeverywhere-blog]

Books lost. And book heroes.

[libraryjournal]

All hail the Mighty Rubber Duckie of the Westport Public Library, Westport, CT. 

Thought you all would enjoy this—every year we try to come up with a library—themed duck for the Sunrise Rotary’s annual fundraiser, the Great Duck Race. Our duck didn’t win, but certainly got a lot of attention on social media!—Marcia Logan. Communications Coordinator, Westport Library

[learninglearningeverywhere-blog]

This made me smile!

[nprinterns]

Today I…..

Showed some of my fellow interns around the RAD (research, archives, & data strategy) Collection Room. 

Hey guys - I’m Caroline from the RAD team (formerly known as the NPR Library). I’m hosting a few sessions to teach the other interns where the Collection Room is, what’s in there, and how to use it. It’s a really great resource on-site here at NPR HQ. We have show rundowns back to the 1st All Things Considered in 1971!

I’m committed to information access and I want my colleagues to be self-sufficient when mining the stacks for that thing that will make their next piece get to another level.

Caroline Gardner | Research, Archives, & Data Strategy Intern

[learninglearningeverywhere-blog]

When I was a kid, I used to think it would be SO cool to work in the NPR library (or should I say RAD). Got off track from that dream, but I'm inching my way back!

[learninglearningeverywhere-blog]

Thoughts on Marcia J. Bates’ “The Invisible Substrate of Information Science”

Marcia J. Bates’ article “Information” from the 2010 edition of the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences was one of the first reading assignments in my INFO 200 class last semester. I have a note in my school notebook that says, “I like Bates,” and other notes about her somewhat philosophical exploration of just what information is.

So I was excited to read her article “The Invisible Substrate of Information Science” for this class. And I was not disappointed!

As others have alluded, her humor and tongue-in-cheek references to the venerable Llewellyn C. Puppybreath III were much appreciated. (And I wonder how many MLIS students/degree holders have dogs whose full names are “Llewellyn C. Puppybreath III” because it’s certainly now on my short-list for our next dog!). I also really liked Bates’ clear declaration that one of the important values in the information science field is a sense of humor. Yay for busting down that “mean librarian” stereotype!

I enjoyed Bates calling out (with italics), “Most people outside our field do not realize that there is a content to the study of form and organization.” This felt like a nice bit of cheerleading saying, “Yes, this IS a legitimate field! And here’s why!”

Probably the biggest impact this article had on me was in its affirmation that “Whew! I AM in the right field!” I recognized myself right away in the notion that information science professionals’ skills are cross-disciplinary and almost antithetical to the common notion of what it means to be an “expert.”

Bates’ comparisons of information science to the fields of education and journalism also made me feel a kinship to the folks who are involved in those pursuits. There is the temptation to simplify the notion of these meta-field professions into a sort of jack-of-all-trades, “know a little about a lot” image. But Bates clarifies her deeper meaning by calling out "the difference in the mental processing of information scientists and conventional disciplinary practitioners.”

Information scientists have a particular way of looking at the world and it’s contents (I belong to the school of thought that everything is information! Even the antelope in the wild, before it becomes a document in the eyes of Susanne Breit). And this mind-shift is either innate or learned for those in the information sciences. And once that lens, as Bates calls it, becomes a fix feature of your viewpoint, you become an information expert, and that informs the way you view and interact with everything.  

It’s not about knowledge necessarily, though knowledge and understanding is important, but information science is about access, organization, and that lens.  This is nicely illustrated by the discussions on this topic so far, as we have described a process of organizing some kind of “collection” or information. The “collection” itself is almost irrelevant, because it’s in the thought processes and decision making that our innate understanding information science shows through.

Bates primary analogy for disproving the notion that one must be a subject expert to serve as an information professional is that we do not expect doctors to portray physicians on television. While I think this is a very useful analogy, it called to mind the recent discussions about transgender characters on television being played by non-transgender folks (probably most notably, Jeffery Tambor’s role as a transgender woman in the Amazon original series “Transparent.”), and other discussions regarding disabled characters being played by able-bodies actors. I realize this is a whole different topic, so I’ll curtail my thoughts to just say that these are such interesting topics and reading this Bates article brought them to mind 

References:

Bates, M.J. (2010). Information. In Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, 3rd Ed.; Bates, Marcia J.; Maack, Mary Niles,Eds. New York: CRC Press, vol. 3, pp. 2347-2360.

Bates, M.J. (1999). The invisible substrate of information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(12), 1043-1050.

Breit, S. (1951), Qu-est-ce que la documentation. Paris: EDIT

Moroville, P. (2005). Ambeint findability. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, Inc.

[libraryjournal]

Can Reading Make You Happier?

After the First World War, traumatized soldiers were often prescribed a course of reading.

Librarians are the original bibliotherapists!

[learninglearningeverywhere-blog]

I hadn’t heard of bibliotherapy as a “thing” until one of my classmates mentioned her Bachelor’s in Liberal Arts with a concentration in Bibliotherapy.  It makes SO much sense on a “gut” level, and I think it’s wonderful that there is academia and training in the field.

And like so many things that aren’t on your radar and then are suddenly “everywhere,” (I think there’s a term for that - note to self to look that up) this article popped up on my Tumblr dashboard today!

(Edited to add that its called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.)

[typhlonectes]

A Proportional Perspective of the World’s Native Languages

by George Dvorsky

This fascinating infographic by Alberto Lucas López shows how 23 of the world’s mother tongues are proportioned, and how they’re distributed around the globe.

Of the 7,102 languages around today, a mere 23 of them are the mother tongue of 50 million people or more. These select languages are spoken by a total of 4.1 billion people…

(read more: io9)

[learninglearningeverywhere-blog]

Proportional maps/visual representations are so revealing. Especially, I think, to those of us in English-speaking first world countries (I’m looking at you (ahem, us), USA!).

This is interesting too because of the number of native languages that are shrinking.

[thelandofmaps]

Oblique Mollweide Projection [4096x2048] CLICK HERE FOR MORE MAPS! thelandofmaps.tumblr.com

[fishingboatproceeds]

Whenever I look at a world map projection I haven’t seen before, I enjoy seeing the world from a different perspective.

And then after a few seconds, I think, “Where the hell is Europe in this map?” And I find it, and I’m like, “That’s it? That’s Europe?! That little thing we could fit in Australia is EUROPE? In what universe is that little thing a continent?”

[learninglearningeverywhere-blog]

The distortions of map projections are such a powerful piece of people’s perceptions of their place in the world. And their region’s/country’s relative power in the world.

We should all have grown up with more accurate representations of the earth.