work – Page 3 – Words' End

October 15, 2008

ask the internets: desktop publishing software?

I have a faculty member here at work who wants to transfer the production of her center’s newsletter from an outside source to in-house. She’s sent me an example, and it’s a reasonably complex layout – definitely not something that should be done in Word – and she wants to keep the layout more or less the same.

We are strongly recommending that people here not use MS Publisher, for various reasons. Do you have a favorite desktop publishing application for Windows XP? Inexpensive is a huge bonus.

(Now, if only she were a Mac user… but no.)

October 14, 2008

Open Access Day 2008!

Did you know today is Open Access Day? Wikipedia’s summary of what open access means is a good one: “free, immediate, permanent, full-text, online access, for any user, web-wide, to digital scientific and scholarly material, primarily research articles published in peer-reviewed journals.”

Why support open access? Won’t the people who need these resources already be associated with colleges or universities, and so have access to them? Well, first off, no; currently access to many important resources costs more than many institutions can afford. But consider also the full range of uses for open-access materials. Educators at all levels can use it to keep up to speed with their fields, and better teach children of all ages. (“Won’t somebody think of the children?!” actually applies here.) People who are dealing with diseases they know little about, whether it’s them or their relatives who are sick, can use scientific articles to educate themselves and get a better perspective on what’s going on with their bodies. Researchers can get their work done faster and ultimately more cheaply – less need for interlibrary loan! – which again increases equality in access to the knowledge we are so quickly amassing, regardless of a scholar’s or institution’s economic status.

Open access does nothing to address the problem of the digital divide; people without internet access still don’t get the benefit of this knowledge. But it’s a step. And when internet spreads further, like telephony, these resources will be waiting for people dealing with epidemics, people who need cheap renewable energy, people who can improve their own lives using knowledge we already have, without waiting for the Peace Corps to get to them.

Support open access. Talk to librarians about it. Talk to your scientist friends about it. Talk to anyone who’ll listen.

September 24, 2008

bits and pieces

This will be redundant if you read any of my housemates’ journals, but: I love my household. Interviewing potential new housemate last night was full of giggling and conversation about EVERYthing and cake and blueberry wine. I have my issues with living here (mostly having to do with allergies, and we’re working on this). But the people, and the circus band in my living room (oh, you think I’m kidding, do you?), and the art and science and foodie quotients are all near optimal.

My job continues to delight me. I suspect it’ll be taking up more of my brain in the next couple of months, as I transition from being almost exclusively computing support to doing more of the balanced mish-mosh of support and digital library work I’m supposed to be doing. This transition is right on schedule; I’m glad for the increased variety, and also glad to have had a reasonably intense introduction to networking and other larger computing issues at BU.

Random students whom I don’t believe I’ve ever actually met grin at me and compliment the blue hair. So do some of the faculty and staff at the school. Nobody has made a huge deal out of it, and nobody seems too weirded out. Also, I may have finally found a community event at work I’d probably feel consistently good participating in: Sabbath space, a sanctuary of sorts on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, in a beautiful chapel space used for prayer, quiet conversation, meditation and… coloring mandalas. Clearly not entirely Christian, for which I’m thankful. It’s been a strange landscape to navigate, this School of Theology. Before I came there, I thought STH was, you know, like majoring in religion except on a graduate level: you learn about as many different religions as you can, and do anthropology and cultural studies and stuff. But no, this is a Methodist seminary, and though they’re all excellent people and extremely tolerant and clearly versed in many religions (several faculty members have artifacts from all over East Asia in their offices), it’s still a Methodist seminary. People learn how to preach, they practice ministry, they graduate and go work in churches and on missions. To me, this is all alien, and the more vociferous Christian contingent hasn’t exactly been sane in this country of late, or anywhere ever. But, you know, so it goes. I’m there to do computer stuff, and to help create digital resources that help people of vastly different backgrounds find out about each other. I work with good people who do good work for their fellow human beings. Ultimately, what they believe in looks like a cross between anthropology, social activism and mythology to me. And I’d be willing to bet that not a single one of them has ever contemplated harming a doctor who performs abortions.

Spiritually speaking, I tend to steer clear of monotheism, and don’t like it around me. But the people at work are fascinating and multifaceted and kind and compassionate and, most of the time, present. I like people who are fully there in the moment with me.

It’s oh-gods-late, and I must go to sleep. There is a seven-day candle burning in my room; every one of those that burns down will light the next one until the vernal Equinox. A continuous flame through the darkest part of the year; thanks to Molly for the idea. G’night.

September 11, 2008

one of those days.

If you are a several-years-old laptop by Dell, I don’t want to talk to you.

If you are a major, Major University Press, can you please explain to me how it is that getting an academic journal sent to my workplace will result in my getting billed the institutional-subscription price, unless I am a professor? In other words: faculty can get a journal sent to them at their university, that’s ok, and they can pay at the individual-subscription rate. But if you’re a staff member, *UP assumes that your copy of their publication will be sent to an institutional library and then displayed there. So they charge you the institutional price.

…

While I was writing this and simultaneously on phone hold with the (very patient) customer service rep for *UP, she came back to tell me she’d received the OK to send the thing to my workplace but charge me just as if I were one person. Which I am. So all this works out! But why did it take twenty minutes?

I said don’t talk to me, laptop.

July 10, 2008

askAcademe

Have you ever used an institutional repository to find/retrieve or publish research? Which repository was it? What did/do you like and/or dislike about it?

Information on multiple repositories, of course, even more welcome.

June 3, 2008

long days, pleasant nights

Sure way to lose my banking business: be obliquely idiosyncratic with regard to when charges post, even as pending. (It’s often out of banks’ control when a charge actually posts, and that’s ok; but there’s no reason a point of sale debit card purchase should not immediately register on my account as spoken-for funds.) Let some charges go through that you shouldn’t have let go through, charge me $93 in overdraft fees in the span of two days, then claim that this is all out of your control.

Then, take a check that bounced the first time (for which I took responsibility) and post it a second time, claiming that it’s not you, it’s that other bank, and that checks might be deposited like that 7-10 times in a row, and if I don’t have sufficient funds, that’s $31 each time. Claim that you don’t have any control over either these deposits or the overdraft fees, and not five minutes later turn to the woman at the next desk and ask her if she’s approved the charges from this morning yet. When called on the discrepancy, insist that no, the entire process is automatic, oh, except that every morning we decide which transactions go through.

Also, have an online billing representative claim that funds are withdrawn from my account on the date for which I set a bill to get paid, regardless of whether it’s an electronic transfer or a paper check. Then have the reality be patently different.

Sigh. Goodbye again, Wainwright Bank. You’re socially responsible and local and all kinds of nifty, but you don’t do the banking part well, at least not the aspects of it that matter to me. I was with you before, left in frustration, decided to give you another chance, and nothing has changed in the last several years. This time I’m breaking up with you for good, you hear?

Today has in fact been long, what with catching up with my boss, who is newly returned from vacation (good!), doing phone tech support late in the day when already tired, and updating Windows on sixteen machines, each of which has 512MB of RAM. On the other hand, evenings have been pleasant indeed. Done with the grant proposal review process and some other obligations, I suddenly have room to breathe. And cook, and plan, and make to do lists, and do many of the things on those to-do lists, and plan menus so I don’t eat out as much during the week, and put together lunches to bring to work, and spend time with friends and loved ones, and watch a movie or two, and do laundry, and clean, and read for hours.

Not that all of my outstanding obligations are dispensed with. There’s the matter of a 500-word abstract I’ve owed folks for some months now… the shorter the piece, the harder it is for me to write.

May 30, 2008

jump start

Been a while since I’ve blogged publicly, hasn’t it? Hello, again.

I go to write this post, and notice a new comment from Regina, an old friend from Moldova who now lives in Israel, with whom I’d fallen out of touch a while ago. Holy cats. Hello, again. It’s lovely to hear from you.

(The timing of the comment and of my being compelled to write here again are a coincidence.)

Yeah, there’s been a lot of sadness that I’m not quite ready to write down. Luckily, the last month or so has also been filled with joy and light and smart people and work (hooray, work!), so it’s not like there’s nothing to tell.

My job at Boston University, the title of which has now settled at Digital Collections and Computing Support Librarian [in the School of Theology], rocks my socks so far. It’s not that I’ve done a whole lot, yet; it’s only been a month, and the end of the academic year at that, and my boss the head librarian has been out on vacation for the past two weeks, so things are relatively slow. On the other hand, there’s plenty to do in the computing-support half of the job. I’ve been learning [more] about how BU’s network is set up, which is nifty. We’re purchasing a big pile of equipment to replace old stuff – both servers and personal workstations for faculty and staff – which, you know, from the support standpoint is great. Soon there’ll be no more @$#%! five-year-old Dells to support, and many of the four-year-old machines are going away too. People are open to the idea of Macs, which is huge in such a behemoth mostly-Windows org. (BU is an immense bureaucratic machine, and I say that with all the affection that one would expect a girl to have for her alma mater.)

Best of all, people want to learn. I’ve been getting to know the faculty and staff. Some of them are already doing digital humanities projects (like the History of Missiology site). Others have cool ideas (hello, Admissions Director using Facebook in all kinds of cool community-building ways). And still others want to figure out how computing can make their research and teaching (and administration, and the school as a community) more awesome.

This is what they hired me to work on. I’m unspeakably excited. Yeah, so far it’s been all support and no digilib, but I expect that to change. There’s a lot of hardware overhauling to do, and some basics to catch up on. That will take some months. But there’s already so much concrete investment of time, thought and resources in digital library stuff at STH that I have no doubt it’s going to go somewhere interesting.

Then there’s life outside of work. That’s been filled with friends, children, loved ones, cats, cooking, Burning Man planning, hand drumming, sci-fi reading, Battlestar Galactica, water and fire and earth, casual photography, breathing deeply. And the weather’s been nice.

Yesterday I flew to DC. Today I participated in a day-long grant proposal review panel for which I read a total of thirty proposals, which took an unreal amount of time and was fascinating and instructive, and I’m not being sarcastic about any of that. The panel itself was great too; in the past month or so I’ve learned a ton about the grant review and award process, and I fully intend to use this knowledge for good. I have generalized thoughts on the whole thing, but have to formulate them separately – must wrap my brain around the whole thing first, and also make sure not to cross any confidentiality boundaries. The whole thing made me feel awfully important, and going away for just over 24 hours meant I could travel with just my work bag, light and easy.

Coming back tonight, at the Reagan Airport, I texted a friend something to the effect of, I like traveling – the interstitial part, the going – even more than being places. She laughed and declared me liminal girl. Certainly that holds true for my life in a larger sense.

There’s more, always – the children I get to hang out with, the surprisingly strong presence of love in my days, feeling so strong from weightlifting with one of my dearest, the USB turntable I bought with which I’m digitizing records from the old country – but it’s 1:45am, and tomorrow’s a workday. Er, today. Whatever.

April 24, 2008

GeekyQ: ticketing systems?

If you’ve used ticketing systems, do you have a favorite? And/or one you particularly dislike? It would live on a unix server with mysql or postgresql, or it could be a java app. (Edit: Of course, open-source and free is best. Way best.)

Why, yes, the new job is going well. My time management skillz as regards sleep, however, leave something to be desired. On the other hand, fine people and good food and spring. Today I had lunch on a lawn, in the sunshine. All the students are out playing frisbee and juggling and squinting through their sunglasses.

April 22, 2008

changes in quotidia

In an hour and a half or so I leave for the T (public transport!! don’t have to drive!) to start my new JOB.

Why, yes, I’m pretty thrilled at the prospect. The title keeps changing in the various documents they’ve sent, but the most recent one is Digital Librarian / Computer Support Manager at the Boston U School of Theology Library. The potential range of what my work days will involve is too large in my head right now, which means life will totally fail to be boring, and I’m likely to get flooded by information overload for the first few weeks, and I am so looking forward to that. I’ll tell y’all more when I get oriented. But… it’s an exciting job in my field. Holy cats.

Thus ends eleven months of unemployment.

On another note: praised be the sun and the moon and cycles, and spring. Did you know they’re saying 71 degree high today in Somerville?! And – just looked this up: there may or may not be a 5-degree difference between my house and my workplace at any given time. Well, of course: Commonwealth Ave is a wind tunnel, and work is also closer to the big water. Good to know.

January 15, 2008

ah, universities!

Dear Mr. Zafrin:

[ha, Mr. again]

This is to acknowledge receipt of your application materials for the position of Coolness in the Local University Libraries. Resume review is currently in progress and you will be notified by the end of the month as to the status of your candidacy.

Cool deal, I like knowing a timeline. But acknowledging receipt of my app two months after I submitted it electronically makes me giggle in both amusement and frustration. Particularly since another Local University managed to lose my application somewhere between [electronic-only] submission and its ultimate destination. So the person who was to review it didn’t receive it until Friday before Christmas. Way to keep me on my toes, Academe (and yet, I love you so).

I’ll only get through this job search if I don’t take anything personally. In the job search or in my personal life, for that matter. This is where the Buddhists come in handy: when there’s nothing to do, do nothing. Sit there. Abide, don’t think, and so on. Well, maybe think on the Nature of Things. But, if possible, without actually thinking.

In other news, I’ve found a favorite employment recruiter. She’s awesome, thorough and just casual enough to put me entirely at ease while instilling me with complete confidence in her abilities. Rock on.