Stuff I Read: On Facebook's Users' Toxicity

These days I have been pondering how useless Facebook has become over time, and by a bit of serendipity I come across this article from The Atlantic. Facebook over time has become more of a cesspool, and I am able to say that in part since I have been using the site since the days when you needed a .edu e-mail address to get an account. Those days are long gone, and odds are newer users may think the .edu address thing is an urban legend. But I assure you it is not. I wanted then to jot down some thoughts about using Facebook, my experience, and comment on some quotes from the article. Basically a group of researchers did some investigation on Facebook and its users, and they found what some of us have suspected a while: yes, the place is awful, and it is due to a good amount of assholes that Facebook freely enables to benefit their bottom line. 

So, for starters, who are those assholes?

 

"They’re superusers. And because Facebook’s algorithm rewards engagement, these superusers have enormous influence over which posts are seen first in other users’ feeds, and which are never seen at all. Even more shocking is just how nasty most of these hyper-influential users are. The most abusive people on Facebook, it turns out, are given the most power to shape what Facebook is."

A big part of the problem are those superusers, who are basically assholes who get a lot of leeway and license from Facebook because they bring in engagement and eyeballs. This helps Facebook's bottom line. It is clear Facebook has no interest in policing any of them because they bring in a lot of attention and engagement (that was their conclusion by the way, though they phrase it a lot nicer than I do, keep reading).

The article also discusses how Facebook manipulates its data by using a metric of their own creation, the MSI (Meaningful Social Interaction) that assigns points to certain interactions you do: a like, a comment, if you reply with an emoji, etc. They do tweak how many points an interaction gets based in part, once again, on their bottom line, what would be favorable to them to keep that engagement going. The article does mention Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and boss, at times opposed any positive changes because he did not want to "mess" with the MSI. 

 

Defining those power users: 

 

"So who are these people? To answer that question, we looked at a random sample of 30,000 users, out of the more than 52 million users we observed participating on these pages and public groups. We focused on the most active 300 by total interactions, those in the top percentile in their total likes, shares, reactions, comments, and group posts. Our review of these accounts, based on their public profile information and pictures, shows that these top users skew white, older, and—especially among abusive users—male. Under-30 users are largely absent."

When some young people joke that Facebook has become the hangout of grandpas and grandmas, they are not far off the mark. Not only has Facebook moved to an older demographic, but it has moved to a fairly homogeneous demographic. And to make it worse:

"Of the 219 accounts with at least 25 public comments, 68 percent spread misinformation, reposted in spammy ways, published comments that were racist or sexist or anti-Semitic or anti-gay, wished violence on their perceived enemies, or, in most cases, several of the above. Even with a 6 percent margin of error, it is clear that a supermajority of the most active users are toxic." 

Now, I make use of every option to limit and filter my Facebook feed. I have my personal profile set to private, so you can't really see it if you are not logged in, and even then, you have to be on my friends'  list. Even with that, I limit it further who can see my content, so I have a custom privacy rule that certain people do not see what I post. A big reason for that is that I have family and friends all over the political spectrum from very liberal to toxic right wingers. I've unfriended some of the more toxic folks, but once in a while there is that one aunt or such who would notice you defriended them, so just filtering them out so I do not see their stuff and they just see a mostly blank page where they think I do not post much is a more peaceful option than going full nuclear. My point in explaining this is that I am mostly spared from the extreme toxicity that many users may experience. That is because I have put in significant effort to use filters and other privacy options to avoid the toxicity. Facebook does offer some privacy and filtering options, but you have to know where they are and how to use them. It takes effort and work to do that, an effort and work that most users either are unable, i.e. they do not know how, or unwilling, i.e. it takes too much work, to do. Additionally, I do use a third party filter software to customize how the Facebook interface looks and remove some of the annoyances they've added over time, but that last part is another story. 

So how bad are those superusers?

 

"Top users pushed a dizzying and contradictory flood of misinformation. Many asserted that COVID does not exist, that the pandemic is a form of planned mass murder, or that it is an elaborate plot to microchip the population through “the killer vaccination program” of Bill Gates. Over and over, these users declared that vaccines kill, that masks make you sick, and that hydroxychloroquine and zinc fix everything. The misinformation we encountered wasn’t all about COVID-19—lies about mass voter fraud appeared in more than 1,000 comments.

 

Racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant comments appeared constantly. Female Democratic politicians—Black ones especially—were repeatedly addressed as “bitch” and worse. Name-calling and dehumanizing language about political figures was pervasive, as were QAnon-style beliefs that the world is run by a secret cabal of international child sex traffickers. "

Again, this is why I make efforts to filter and restrict certain things. While my measures are not perfect, I can skip a lot of the above. I will add that users on my friends list who did any of the above quickly got defriended. I do not care who they were or how long I knew them for, once they went down the dark path of intentional willfully ignorant misinformation and disinformation, I cut them off. I do look over my feeds and clean them up every so often, so for example, if someone suddenly decides to go antivax, they are gone and dead to me. I may be a librarian and educator, but even I know some people cannot be saved. I do not engage such people. I do not try to "correct" them with facts, not worth the effort. You cannot help those who refuse to be helped, and you definitely cannot help those who have decided to be your enemies, so out they go. These days I value my mental health more. 

On algorithms.

"Recommendation algorithms change over time, and Facebook is notoriously secretive about its inner workings. Our research captures an important but still-limited snapshot of the platform. But so long as user engagement remains the most important ingredient in how Facebook recommends content, it will continue to give its worst users the most influence. And if things are this bad in the United States, where Facebook’s moderation efforts are most active, they are likely much worse everywhere else."

Speaking of their algorithms, this is another reason you may want to check your feeds and weed them once in a while. Things like groups, organizations, and pages you like get put in a big giant list (you can check this list on your profile). Facebook decides in part what to feed  you in your general feed based on those things. I recently did a weed and removed a bunch of stuff, and suddenly the feeds got leaner, but it also removed a lot of junk. That is I suppose another lesson for users: you need to actively work to filter your feed to get better content and remove or at least mute the toxic stuff. I will add that Facebook does make an effort to make it more difficult to filter and block things you may not want. After all, it all boils down to what serves their bottom line, and engagement, even if it is your making an angry comment on some toxic fuckbagel's post, is good for their business. You ignoring it and then blocking it is may be better for you, but it is bad business for Facebook.

And in conclusion, the article's author writes:

 

"Allowing a small set of people who behave horribly to dominate the platform is Facebook’s choice, not an inevitability. If each of Facebook’s 15,000 U.S. moderators aggressively reviewed several dozen of the most active users and permanently removed those guilty of repeated violations, abuse on Facebook would drop drastically within days. But so would overall user engagement."

As I said at the beginning, this is the kind of thing some of us suspected, but now we have some tangible proof. 

Now, a couple of my readers may be asking why I do not leave Facebook. Well, believe me I would like to leave it. However, there are reasons that keep me there. One, I have family and friends who, for whatever their reason, would not move to an alternative platform. Facebook is how they stay in touch, check out each other's family photos, the cute kids, etc. If I left, I would lose that. Two, at least on this campus, the students basically live on Facebook. Our library has a Facebook page, and we get some decent engagement from the campus community because of it. In addition, I am a member of some campus groups, and if I as a a librarian need to make a library announcement, share content from our Facebook feed, our library blog, or other material, posting about it in the campus groups works a lot better than sending a campus wide email. We need to be blunt here: students are bombarded with so much campus email that they soon learn to ignore it. Some even create email rules to toss certain campus emails into their junk folder. But they do pay attention to their Facebook. Even knowing how bad and toxic Facebook can be, they stick with it, so in my line of work I need to stick with it. I hate the idea, but the library is not about to shut our page down and leave Facebook. Again, the damn engagement comes into play. 

On a side note, it may be interesting to investigate just how much our students on campus know or not about Facebook's darker side. This would go along with how much they pay attention to news or not. But that is a thought for another time.

 

 

Citation for the article: Matthew Hindman, "Facebook Has A Superuser-Supremacy Problem." The Atlantic, February 10 2022.

 

A small note on the citation. It appears this is an online only article. I checked the print issue, it would be the January/February 2022 issue, and it is not in the print issue. I also checked our online databases, since we do have online access to The Atlantic to present day (i.e we get the latest issue), and this article is not in that either. So I am speculating they do not provide an article like this one as part of the vendor's package to the library. This can be an issue for me if I get someone at the reference desk asking for the article. In theory we have the magazine, but in practice we do not have it (or we do not have all of it). How did I read it? Well, the magazine has a limited paywall, i.e. gives you some free articles before it wants you to pay, plus, if need be, I know a trick or two to get around that if need be that I do not discuss in polite company.

Article Note: On Diversity and Working Class Students

Citation for the article:

Casey, Janet Galligani, "Diversity, Discourse, and the Working Class Student." Academe 91.4 (July/August 2005): 33.

I read this as part of a jigsaw exercise for a session of the New Faculty seminar series I am attending this academic year as part of my experience as a new faculty member at Berea College. I read it back in September of last year, so again, this is catching up on some notes.

Notes that I wrote about it as I read it:

• I think the main point is that we often talk about diversity, that we often say it is a desirable thing, but we don't always know what the term means, let alone what it looks like. In addition, the article considers the invisibility of working class students when compared to other, more visible minorities or groups. 
• The article opens with an anecdote. It mentions recent commenters regarding diversity regarding diversity, but I noticed the article lacked specific names or citations. To be honest, I've seen bloggers who at least give links and cite better. However, I find the points made to be valid, maybe in part from experience, maybe in part because I've done other readings, so I am able to fill in some of the gaps. The author also draws on personal experience as a teacher. 
• I am not sure that I totally buy that working class student are always/totally silent. Is this a question of engagement? For us teachers and educators, how can we assure that we do not come across as elitist but instead as approachable?
• By the way, the rhetoric the author mentions of college as a way up and out of the working class is now coming into question. I would add that, if nothing else, the U.S. as a nation has done a great job of denigrating working class work, but that is a separate thought for a separate time. Anyhow, the Great Recession has served to challenge a lot of previously unchallenged assumptions. 
• A quote from the article that really caught my attention and one I know can be true: "But this perspective ignores the reality that some students have a lot to lose by going to college. Specifically, working-class students often become alienated from their families in direct proportion to their procurement of new ideas and attitudes, and they are frequently unprepared for the cultural and personal schisms that result." In essence, these students often pay a very high price. 
• The challenge for faculty who come from working class, or other minority backgrounds, comes from the pressures of academia to conform to its model, making it hard for them to serve as role models. On a side note here, the book I am reading at the moment, Mentoring Faculty of Color, is very relevant on this particular issue (even if it may not go as much into working class directly). 

Some things from the actual session where the article was discussed:

• The college is working strongly on interracial relations (Black and White mainly, but others too). This is part of the eight Great Commitments of Berea College. There is still much work to be done. 
• A suggestion was made for future convocation events to have discussion times with safe, facilitated spaces. I have mentioned this as well to at least one member of the campus committee in charge of the convocations. The way things are set up now, students have their departmental labor meetings right after convocations, so basically they have to rush out after the convocation to the labor meetings, which are required. I suggested moving the labor meetings to a different day of week, which could also allow then for the discussion spaces to be created. However, it is a big undertaking to achieve such a change, so I don't foresee it happening any time soon. It is a pity because, outside of some classes that may require students to attend a specific convocation (usually one related to some class topic), convocation speakers and topics are rarely discussed once the event is over. I see this as an issue that needs to be addressed on the campus. 
• Question given to the group to prompt reflection on the article: what insights on race, class, so on do you take away from the article? 

CBS News raises questions about Mortenson and CAI

Last year, Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea (link to my GoodReads review; I had a good impression at the time, though I was not particularly thrilled about the book. Not the best written thing I have ever read), came to the UT Tyler campus. I suppose like many folks who listened to the guy, who seems a lot better as a speaker than a writer, I did find the story inspiring. So I find it disappointing to say the least that he is being exposed for lies in the book as well as financial issues, such as money from the book and his book touring not really going to the CAI charity like he claims. That I find particularly egregious since a big part of his speech was promoting how the book helps the organization so they can build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Jon Krakauer, an early supporter, probably summarizes this pretty well (maybe a bit more charitable than others may be willing to be) when he says,

"Krakauer: He's not Bernie Madoff. I mean, let's be clear. He has done a lot of good. He has helped thousands of school kids in Pakistan and Afghanistan....He has become perhaps the world's most effective spokesperson for girls' education in developing countries. And he deserves credit for that...Nevertheless, he is now threatening to bring it all down, to destroy all of it by this fraud and by these lies."

Sadly, this is not just about some good guy with a few character flaws. These are serious issues, and what seemed like good acts are now going to be tainted. Worse, from the report, it seems the acts were not that great anyhow (schools claimed to be build but not built, or built poorly, for instance). 

You can read the expose from CBS news here.

Update note (same day): Galley Cat has a summary. It also includes links to statements by Mortenson and CAI that they sent to CBS regarding the 60 Minutes segment. 

Can we please stop the "library is dying" hysteria already?

This is going to be a bit long, so my four readers are warned. I tend to stay away from this type of topic, but to be honest, I am getting a little tired of the constant "the library is dying" hysterical meme going in and out of Librarian Blogsville and the less-than-well informed media. I read the piece in question, and I spent some time writing some thoughts. So here it goes. This is mostly a writing exercise as well as just letting some stuff out.

* * * *

"I'm sorry, did I break your concentration? I didn't mean to do that. Please, continue, you were saying something about best intentions. What's the matter? Oh, you were finished! Well, allow me to retort" --Jules, from the film Pulp Fiction.

Brian T. Sullivan's column in The Chronicle of Higher Education, "Death by Irony" (which just got the title changed when I rechecked the link to  ""Academic Autopsy Report 2050" because one reader too many could not tell the piece was meant to be satire or irony) about how academic libraries will be dead by 2050 pretty much begs for a rebuttal. I've heard the piece is supposed to be satire, and that would not worry me were it not for the fact that our campus president would likely view it seriously and use it as evidence to close the library down. That the author is an instructional librarian does not help the matter either since people will always need a librarian to show them how to use information effectively. It's one area where we add value. That he is so dismissive, even in jest (assuming it is jest) just makes me wonder what kind of librarian is he.

I have refuted the column, in a slightly different form previously, in a small piece I tossed over in my scratch pad blog back in November of last year. Some of the arguments I wrote back then would be very applicable now.

Let me take Sullivan's points one at a time:

1. "Book collections became obsolete." The old canard that e-books and online texts will take over the world. First, I wonder what kind of students Sullivan works with because here our students still have a very strong preference for printed books or what they call "real books." Sure, more distance students are embracing e-books, but on campus at least, print still rules the day. Second, the digital book interfaces still leave a lot to be desired in terms of usability. Honestly, I don't see that getting better by 2050. In fact, a lot of the phone calls we get when it comes to e-books are variants of the "how do I get the book/make this work?" questions. And let's not even go into the whole licensing versus ownership and how to access and/or authenticate certain users questions though those questions do add to the pain and can show why print books are not going to die any time soon in spite of some folks' wishful thinking. Third, as for campus IT managing e-book collections, I don't think they can or are willing to actually manage e-book collections. Such management does require more than just pushing some buttons, applying some code, and making sure the Internet works so users can get to the e-book platform. What I am trying to say is that e-book management is a lot more than just the technology. Guess who negotiates the contracts and then organizes the information, metadata, so on to make it accessible. Not the IT people. That would be a librarian. 
2. "Library instruction was no longer necessary." Really? There are so many ways to refute this, but I will try to be concise. To start, see my retort to #1 above. I will say: guess who teaches students and faculty to use those e-books. We do, and we do so for individuals as well as groups. Do you honestly think the IT Department will do such work? Nope. Faculty will probably not do it either for the following reasons: 
1. They may not want to give up their class time. 
2. They may not know how the systems work. After all, who on campus makes it their job to keep up with e-book, databases, so on, then teach it to others? We do. Heck, were are the ones who often have to drag the faculty into the 21st century. 
3. "Information literacy was fully integrated into the curriculum." To this I say, "that will be the day." See my #2 above. This also assumes that faculty will actually commit to information literacy with more than lip service to how good it is or a few small measures to pass accreditation. Yes, librarians will play a role in designing the new curricula that integrates information literacy, but I think the partnership will continue beyond the design. For the answer, I would look to models of embedded librarianship or even campus writing labs, which will survive as long as faculty prefer to just send the kids over there to get help with their basic writing or their research skills. We already see it when we get students at the reference desk who say, "my professor sent me here to get research on X." This also means that the reference service will not disappear. And as I am typing I am wondering, if we do achieve integrated information literacy in the curriculum, is that not a good thing? Especially if it works as I envision it, being a collaborative effort? I thought that was the holy grail for many academic librarians.
4. "Libraries and librarians were subsumed by information-technology departments." I will grant that some librarians who are more technologically inclined will seek and find jobs in IT. Now, IT subsuming everything in terms of the library? See #1 above in terms of collection management. Also see #3 above in terms of teaching information literacy and reference services (don't worry, I am getting to Sullivans' 5th point). It's not all about technology. There are significant elements of people skills (here is another post waiting to happen, but I digress), pedagogy, information organization and management among others that IT pretty much lacks. As for cataloguing being done by vendors, even when they hire former librarians to do it, I can refer you to our cataloguer so she can tell you about time and labor going into fixing what the vendors provide as well as making sure it works locally. Your local IT department is just not going to have that level of care or quality control or customer service (yes, cataloguing IS a public service). Librarians do, and no, the librarians who jump over to IT won't be doing it either since they will be focused on actual IT work. Again, the library and its librarians are not going anywhere. 
5. "Reference services disappeared." I've already considered much of this in the above. Reference services may and will take new forms, but they will not disappear. As for tiered services, what Sullivan did not mention is that tiered models usually work on a triage model where the nonlibrarian knows when to refer a question up to a professional librarian. While a well-trained paraprofessional or student worker can be very capable and knowledgeable (and we are assuming good training, which is quite a variable), they certainly cannot do everything and usually have a librarian for back-up to fall upon. This is an important detail missing from Sullivan's column. He also mentions that low-wage paraprofessionals cost less. I would suggest he look at companies who prided themselves on sending operations to India that are suddenly bringing their call centers back to the U.S. Or that credit card company that now brags that you can get a REAL person on the first call attempt rather than the cheaper phone tree. Yes, they actually use that as a selling point: talk to a REAL person. Just because something is cheaper, it does not follow it is the best thing to do.Your campus librarians are information and education assets. Or you can let economics trump your quality, which leads us to #6. 
6. "Economics trumped quality." We don't have to wait for Sullivan's dead library future for this. I may have to grant Sullivan this one. Economics is trumping quality in higher education, and we are seeing the consequences in a less skilled workforce, less educated college students, social promotion and grade inflation, etc.If the powers that be use "economics trump quality" as their excuse to kill the library, they ought to be ashamed of themselves, and they ought to be fired because it means they will be willing to cut corners elsewhere to save a few bucks. And if you think Wikipedia and Google Scholar will replace the library more cheaply,  you may as well admit defeat now and just let Asians, Europeans, and others who already beat the U.S. in every educational measure to just flat out take over while our students clean their toilets and make their Big Macs. I say that about the U.S. because when you look at stories of libraries dying, you don't see as many overseas (except for the British, where The Guardian has one every so often); more often than not, you hear of countries struggling to open libraries. Now I am not being extreme. I am just running with the "economics trumps quality" and the libraries and librarians as expendable luxuries and taking them to logical conclusions. Because if academic libraries are the heart of the campus, and we let economics trump quality, what else in higher education are we willing to amputate/remove/kill in order to save a few bucks? Is that really the future? I hope not, and as long as we have our academic librarians and libraries, probably not. 

For more on the "economics trumping quality" line of thinking, I would recommend taking a look at The Five-Year Party, which I recently read. 

On things found inside old books

There was a small article in The Guardian talking about marginalia and the fact that it will likely be lost in e-books. It is not just marginalia, those small and sometimes quirky bits of writing that readers leave behind in books. If you are famous, your marginalia in a book could make that book a lot more valuable. In my case, if wrote in my books margins, they would probably discard the book because it would actually lower the value. At any rate, I don't like writing in books overall. I had to do it in college for a couple of literature classes (the professor would literally tell us mark this or that and make this or that note on the margin). I tend to prefer making any reading notes in my personal journal.

Anyhow, the article also mentions objects you may find in books years later left behind by a reader; it could be a bus ticket, a restaurant receipt, so on. The one item I thought about was a receipt from the Club de Lectores de Puerto Rico (PR Readers' Club, kind of a local version of the Book of the Month Club). The CLPR folded years ago, but what is interesting to me is that it was a handwritten receipt. This was long before personal computers were more than somebody's imagination figment. The receipt currently resides in my mother's tattered copy of Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude) that I know possess. I can imagine her looking over some catalog that came in the mail, making her selection, filling out the form and sending it out. Then, some guys in some warehouse would receive the order, go find the books, fill out the receipt order form, and send it with the book to my mother. She likely used the receipt as her bookmark. I usually use a "proper" bookmark when I read books (I only use scraps of paper or other things when a bookmark is not handy), but the receipt has stayed there. It's just another small connection to her and the past much as reading a book that belonged to her connects me to her and what she read. And it reminds me of a simpler time perhaps.

Brief note on article about research assignments (link to post on Alchemical Thoughts)

First, the rant: Another day, another crappy day using Blogger. As if things were not bad enough (it would not save the draft I typed originally. I honestly do not know what's up with the "save, won't save" nonsense), apparently when you type it in MS Word (especially newer versions of Word), the process injects all sorts of XML bullshit into the code that Blogger does not recognize. This naturally drives the system nuts, and I have to either spend time going through the code to remove it or just post the item elsewhere and link it here (assuming of course this gets through). Thank you Mr. effing bastard Bill Gates for making your software more invasive, bloated, and annoying than it has to be. Thus endeth the rant.

You can find the actual post with my thoughts on a recent piece out of The Chronicle of Higher Education over here. Apologies to my two readers for making you jump another hoop.

It's just reader's advisory

This article on "The Fine Art of Recommending Books" by Laura Miller, writing for Salon magazine, is basically describing what a good librarian skilled in reader's advisory does: match a reader with books that meet the reader's needs. We ask questions; we assess the reader's tastes and mood to find the next read, and we sometimes may do a bit of research to find it (be it online or from a guidebook for instance). We do it in a way that is more personal and thoughtful than any online algorithm. I would say it is a skill and an art. The article also highlights librarian extraordinaire Nancy Pearl. I think the only thing Ms. Miller left out is actual recommendation websites such as Library Thing and GoodReads (this is the one I use personally to keep track of my reading). Sure, she mentioned Amazon's robots, but that is just not the same. Many online communities now exist for readers to share their books and reading experiences in more relaxed settings. Still, an interesting little piece worth a look. I think I would use it also as springboard to promote what we librarians already do.

Just because you have a Ph.D. it does not mean librarianship should be your backup plan

The author of this column featured in Inside Higher Ed needed to do his homework. I usually don't jump on stuff like this, but this needed to get a reply. Let me start at the end of Joshua Kim's piece on academic tech and library careers for the Ph.D. folks. For a newly minted Ph.D., is a library career a good option? The answer is pretty much no. We can now make a small substitution in Mr. Kim's opening sentence to reveal the reason: "the [librarian] job market is in the toilet."It has been that way for years now in spite of cheery library administrators, the ALA, and LIS professors touting a non-existent wave of retirements and non-existent incoming job openings. The reason they do that is so they can continue to fill their enrollments in LIS schools. To deny this given the current climate is to be either ignorant or dishonest. So, telling unemployable Ph.D's to consider going to library school, or do some alternative program like CLIR, is at the very least irresponsible. I don't say unemployable because newly minted Ph.D's lack qualifications to be employed in their chosen field (that could be a whole other issue), but I say it because the simple reality is that universities are churning out doctoral graduates at an excessive rate into a low-to-no demand job market.

Let me blunt: if you go through a doctoral program, realize that your prospects to be employed as a professor in academia are dim, not to mention the possible issue of racking up an obscene amount of debt you will likely never be able to repay. Falling back on the hope of becoming an academic librarian is not going to be your salvation. If anything, you should have stopped at your first master's degree, then gone to library school. Because unless you are hoping to work in an elite R-1 school, you are overqualified with that Ph.D. A substantial number of academic librarians work at teaching universities and smaller settings, places where your very advanced degree is not exactly an automatic entry key. Allow me to tell you who you would be competing against:

• Newly minted librarians. These are the people of all ages who are just coming out of library school. Many of them already go to library school with some library experience, and if they were smart, they got themselves some more experience while in library school (a job in a library, assistantship, internship, so on) to increase their odds to be hired.
  
• Recent graduates of library school. These are the folks who graduated within a year to let's say three years or so. They have been in the market a while due to the bad market. If lucky, they may have a part time job in a library to make ends meet, often along with a second job.
  
• Experienced librarians. These are folks who are looking for a better job. They may be looking for an advancement (say become head of a department), or they may be making a lateral move to another entry level job if the new job is better in some way. In our profession, experience in libraries counts for a lot, and if these guys are any good, they get hired fast.
  

All those folks are already out there fighting for the few librarian positions in the market. A lot of them (like me) are very geographically mobile, which means they will go where the job is. And let's not even consider the issue of low salaries in librarianship (unless you become an administrator, but that is a separate issue). Further, all those other folks I list above often bring in a wealth of experiences such as classroom teaching, work experiences that are relevant, technical skills, so on that many new Ph.D's who have only known the Ivory Tower may or not have. That's your competition if you are one of those new Ph.D's who suddenly thinks they will fall back on librarianship as a job. This is especially applicable to doctoral graduates in the humanities. Hey, just look at recent reports from the Modern Language Association (MLA) if you need proof. You can find some reporting from Inside Higher Ed on that very issue here.

I am willing to admit that I may come across as harsh. I honestly believe that, as someone in a doctoral program, you should know how to research things like a job market in your chosen profession. If not, you should be asking your local librarian, who will likely tell you what I am telling you if he or she is honest. Yet I also know, both from experience and extensive reading (remember: the tagline of this blog is "I read a lot of the LIS literature so you don't have to"), that some people will not be honest with you when it comes to job markets, the placement rates of their programs, so on. Thus allow me then to give a bit of the truth because better that you hear it now before you decide to plunk down more money into yet another degree, in this case the MLS, than learning the hard way that you could be as unemployable as before, if not worse.

In the end, I am not saying to not pursue the degree if it is your lifelong passion or if you want the education and/or do not care if you work in that line of work (maybe you have a full time job already, for instance). I have been very fortunate to find work as an academic librarian, but I learned some hard lessons along the way. Those lessons could be material for another blog post, but I digress. However, if you choose to get that doctorate anyways, do so informed and with your eyes wide open. This includes realizing that you may end up working in something other than academia. There are perfectly good careers out there for doctoral graduates outside of academia if you are willing to look, which is another little detail graduate schools often fail to mention. Realize also that jumping over to the library is not the magical cure given the reasons I have stated above. If you ask me straight up, I'd tell folks to not do it. But if you must, do it only after very careful consideration of your options and go in informed and prepared to face any consequences of your decision.

Additional note: I made a small list of items for further reading over on the scratch pad, Alchemical Thoughts, in case anyone wants to get more context.

Article Note: On students and out-of-classroom support

Citation for the article:

Jones, Adam C. "The Effects of Out-of-Class Support on Student Satisfaction and Motivation to Learn." Communication Education 57.3 (July 2008): 373-388.

Read via EBSCO EJS Service.



This article deals with the topic of out-of-classroom support for college students and how it can affect their satisfaction and motivation. According to the article, a lot of the research in communication studies has focused on interactions inside the classroom, and this article adds to the literature by looking at interactions outside of the classroom. For me, I think this is a little bit of validation for some of my experiences in working with students, especially applicable to my previous workplace where I did fairly extensive work with individual students. It may also be good to look at the article in light of some of the literature on retention, which I have looked at previously.

Some general notes from the article:

• "An increasing body of research points to social support as a means for improving immediate outcomes of stressed individuals (Burleson and MacGeorge, 2002)" (qtd. in 374). This is in the literature review part, and it is in the context of pointing out how stress can have a negative impact on students' psychological and physical health.
  
• "The researchers concluded that perceived qualities such as kindness, compassion, and helpfulness, along with teacher humor orientation, promote teacher-student conversations that extend to issues beyond the specifics of course assignments and information" (374).
  
• The study reported in this article seeks to learn how teachers that use out-of-classroom support (OCS) affect students' experiences.
  
• The definition of OCS: "OCS is defined in this study as as teacher communication, occurring outside of the classroom setting, that demonstrates a responsiveness to students' needs; communicates caring; validates students' worth, feelings or actions; and helps students manage and cope with stressful situations through the provision of information, assistance, or tangible resources" (375).
  
• 594 undergraduates enrolled in basic communication courses and one upper division course participated in the study by completing a voluntary questionnaire. They answered questions about six different scenarios that controlled for levels of OCS. Readers can look at the article for details on how the author controlled for the scenarios.
  

Some of the findings:

• Similar to results in other studies about communication for young people, "students are also more satisfied after interacting with teachers who communicate OCS in response to students seeking help" (382).
• "Teachers may take solace in knowing that neither their own sex nor their students' sex interferes with or contributes to their ability to benefit from social support opportunities" (383). In plain English, gender was not a significant predictor for OCS results.
  
• However, there is the caveat that teachers are not expected to be counselors or psychologists. They need to know when to refer students to other appropriate campus resources as needed. Yet do keep in mind that teachers are often the first line of defense, so to speak. Note: "Teachers' use of OCS may allow students to feel more comfortable and more connected to their teachers and to their academic institutions, affecting their persistence in school" (383).
  
• A limitation of the study was that it was not very ethnically or racially diverse. 89% of participants were identified as Caucasian.
• Like much of the pedagogical endeavor, there can be some risks. For students, they may be reluctant to seek OCS if they perceive a teacher is not supportive, or if they feel asking for help can be seen by others as weakness or incompetence. For the teacher, providing OCS for one student could be perceived by others as preferential treatment, so a teacher might be reluctant to act. Some teachers may be sceptical about a students' need (for example, do they really need an extension on an assignment for a valid reason?). However, I think the research bears out that the outcomes outweight the risks.

Guybrarians are not freaks of nature

I recently saw this article from The Ledger in Florida about Guybrarians. So am I kind of a freak? If one goes by the headline in the article, one would say I am sort some sort of creature from the endangered species list. Sasquatch has better odds of being sighted than a male librarian. To put things in perspective, I will say that I am one of two male librarians in my library out seven librarians total. Not too shabby, if you ask my director who is simply thrilled at the diversity we males bring to her library. I understand the article is trying to make the point that librarianship can be a good career for men, but in doing so, we end up looking like rare birds anyways.

I can't say that librarianship was the path that I always knew I would follow. It was not part of some master plan. But I have often said that if someone had told me about this sooner, I would have simply gone to library school right after my first masters without the extra hassle of trying for a doctorate that I dropped, in large part because of the dismal market humanities doctoral graduates face. I call myself the gypsy librarian, but it is not because I want to work five academic jobs without benefits and with exploitative conditions. That I was not happy with certain departmental politics in my major (and a couple of professors more interested in their image and in pruning students than actually helping them), plus the fact I was working as an instructional assistant at the library sort of led me down the path I am following now. I was also fortunate. I had a librarian who said to me that I would make a good librarian, and for some reason, I actually bought it. I transfered to library school, and the rest, as they say, is history. I am about to finish my fourth year as a professional librarian, and overall, I am pretty happy. I do agree with Randall McDonald's description of a librarian "as being a sort of jack-of-all-trades, a perfect job for a person who likes reading, technology, history and has a general interest in knowledge." I would add it is a pretty good line of work for a generalist, for someone not bound by disciplines, for someone with a curious mind, and very importantly for someone who likes working with people. In my case, I have found my previous teaching experience to be an asset. Unfortunately, I am in a position now where those skills are not in high demand, but that is another story. Overall, for me at least, what brought me to librarianship is the opportunity to work with students and hopefully make some difference in their academic success. Anyhow, I am just another librarian in the trenches.

P.S. As I was about to publish this, I came across the story from LISNews about the Black male librarian as endangered species (NPR story here). So, is the Latino male librarian close to extinction as well? How about the Asian American male librarian? Are we now moving to some kind of journalistic meme where we ask if males of any ethnicity in librarianship are in danger of extinction now? And while I do think we can use more representation from different groups in our profession, somehow the tone of these stories does not seem right. Just a thought.

Article Note: On practical knowledge and hostile environments

Citation for the article:

Guzman, Gustavo. "Sharing Practical Knowledge in Hostile Environments: A Case Study." Journal of Workplace Learning 20.3 (2008): 195-212.

Read via Emerald.

This was one of those articles I read outside of LIS once in a while. However, it seemed relevant because I am sure there are more than a few librarians working in what can be defined as hostile environments. In brief, the article deals with how knowledge is shared and how the dynamics work or fail in a hostile work situation. The article has a pretty extensive literature review and set of notes.

• A definition, just so we know what kind of place we are dealing with: "Pluralistic goals, hierarchic control, worker's resistance, and contest for material or symbolic resources resulting in low trust and conflict, that permeate decision-making and negotiation processes during task performance, are some of the features of hostile industrial environments. . . " (196). This can sound familiar. If you do not believe me, have a look at the librarian sector of the blogosphere, especially a good number of the pseudonymous or anonymous blogs. While some of the A-listers may complain that those bloggers are not brave enough or too mean, they are still a reflection of the fact that there are some hostile library workplaces out there.
  
• Social significance: "From the social perspective, hostile enviroments means low inter-personal trust and unwillingness of experts to mentor novices" (196). Now this might even be an interesting angle to consider: for the new folks out there, how many of you have found yourselves needing to learn some new skill or how something operates in your workplace only to be confronted by some older vet who simply does not want to share the knowledge? The "unwillingness of experts" seems to be a common complaint when the "leadership meme" comes rolling around the librarian sector of the blogosphere every so often.
  
• A bit more, this time looking at inexperienced workers: "This situation converges with Lave and Wenger's (1991) community of practice idea in terms that inexperienced workers only gained access to insider tacit knowledge after they were accepted by the experienced workers" (206).
  

Don't count those encyclopedias out yet.

When I was a kid, probably around 12 or so, one of my favorite books to read at night were the volumes from a yellow cover edition of an encyclopedia. I believe the title was Illustrated World Encyclopedia or other. The articles were pretty easy reading, and I usually learned something new or interesting. One of the entries I remember was the one about "Police" because it had a photo of a police department in the U.S. where the officers did not wear uniforms, but they all wore business clothes (jacket and tie). I found that particular detail fascinating at that age. The encyclopedia's last volume had a section of summaries of great works in literature, which I also found interesting as well. A lot of the allure of that book was that I could just pull out a volume, find an entry that interested me, and read through it, then keep going to the next or browse some more. Those were the days, so to speak, when I was looking for something light to read before bed, that I could just pick up and drop.

Fast forward to today, and I find that I often look for readings that I can pick up and drop. Of course, the reason today is that I have responsibilities, and time is a bit more limited. I still like the idea of reference books. However, it seems that some are ready to declare them dead. Noam Cohen, writing for The New York Times, says to "Start Writing the Eulogies for Print Encyclopedias." He writes that "the classic multivolume encyclopedia is well on its way to becoming the first casualty in the end of print." I have to admit that I have not picked up a volume from something like Britannica to browse in quite a while. I don't think it is the death knell of encyclopedias just yet. They may just have less volumes, or they may streamline some more. The author observes that the biggest clients for these encyclopedias are schools and libraries, and I think that will still be the case. At least for libraries, I think they will still opt to have at least one multivolume encyclopedia. Now, why would they do that in the age of Wikipedia?

• Well, for one, computers are known to go down every once in a while. Having a general reference work at hand may be desirable then.
  
• Often, you can get a quick overview on a topic from one of these volumes. Need some ideas for keywords? Try using the encyclopedia, find the entry for your topic, and see how it is described. Now, you may say, "but I can do it just fine on Wikipedia." And I would say, "maybe, maybe not." It may depend on what is more efficient at the time.
  
• The authority question I think is debatable. While there have been reports that Wikipedia may do better against works like Britannica, the final lesson is that you have to evaluate what you read. This is something we should be teaching our patrons no matter what reference tool we use.
  
• Serendipity. There is something about looking through the pages of a book that Wikipedia just cannot duplicate. And at this point, not even Kindle can do that (yet).
  

Are these the most compelling reasons? I am willing to bet that for a good number of my brethren who are ready to bury the print probably not. I will throw one more in: the just in case. This is philosophical on my part, but I think a good ready reference collection should have a good multivolume general encyclopedia in it. Just like we argue that we should have the Statistical Abstract or citation handbooks, or dictionaries, we should have that general reference work as well.

You see, the assumption often is that everything will be online. You can just get it off the Internet. But, will it still be there on the Internet, whatever "it" is? And what happens when formats change, or methods of access? Will it still be there online? And let's not even bring in issues of digital divide and access or lack of access to the Internet? The books will still be there, and as long as people know how to read, they will be accessible. Just a thought.

Cohen describes these encyclopedias as household icons, referring to the ones people would buy for the home. They certainly were icons in my house, where my parents made sure we had a good set or two of reference works handy. Now, some of you out there may get a chuckle at this, assuming you are old enough to remember this, but we did have a couple of reference works we bought volume by volume at the store (it may have been one of the large grocery stores or a department store. This was pre-Walmart people). Now, laugh it up if you wish, but one of the best sets on art history in our house we bought that way. It was published by Salvat, a Spanish company (wow. I googled them and found the link. Seems they publish a few more things these days. I tried finding the Worldcat record for Historia del Arte, and I got a few results; I think this is the right one). Anyhow, those art history volumes were one of my first introductions to classical art from the ancient Greeks to modern art. They had illustrations in color that were pretty good (so good mom worried we ogled at the nudes a bit much. Hey, three teen boys in the house, you figure it out). But it was a big deal when we managed to get the whole set. We also had a encyclopedic Spanish dictionary (same publisher. Salvat pretty much had a monopoly on that market back then). We kept those books for years. My parents only got rid of them when they moved to Texas from Puerto Rico, and mom described that as one of the most painful things she ever did. She is an avid reader and book lover.

Never underestimate what a good encyclopedia can do is all I am saying. Today, I use more online sources. It is the way things are done, but I make it a point to have the ability to use a good print reference work as well. It's a matter of balance. I like to look at it as being able to navigate both worlds, the print and the electronic, knowing when to use each one. And in the end, it may not all be in the encyclopedia, but it is not all online either. So the humble multivolume encyclopedia, once such a regal object in our homes, will remain, just on a smaller scale perhaps. But I don't see it dying anytime soon.

The Economist on Spanish Book Market, and some thoughts

The article, dated January 17th, 2008 and entitled "Lost in Translation No More," had a couple of interesting things that caught my attention. I read literature in Spanish when I get a chance. In that regard, I mostly enjoy contemporary fiction, some classics, and a few miscellaneous things. Buying Spanish books when I was at the previous job was one of the highlights of my library career so far, and one that I sorely miss where I am at now. Anyhow, some of the highlights:

• "The market for books in Spanish is thought to be the second-largest in the world. It is the biggest for books in translation, which account for about a fifth of the 120,000 Spanish titles published each year."
  
• "And the enthusiasm at Guadalajara notwithstanding, the industry frets that readers are scarce or, sniffily, that they prefer self-help books to more elevated fiction." I have to make a remark here at the risk of coming off as a snob, but this is partially true. All one has to do is look at any Criticas catalog or the latest list on their website to see that a very large number of their selections falls in the dreaded (to some. Hey, if that's your reading taste go for it) self-help category. Now, I would not harp on Criticas if it were not for the fact that it is emerging as the place to go for librarians when it comes to guidance about Spanish book selections, especially since they pride themselves on reviewing the books in English, making it easier for librarians with no Spanish knowledge to make selections. In its defense, I will say the publication is more geared to public libraries, which have the type of demographic that would find self-help and similar more appealing. As an academic librarian, I did pick out some things out of Criticas (when they pick out literary selections, they do pick very good ones), but I knew to look into other sources as well. That I am a native Spanish speaker certainly helped; I could and often did just go directly to publisher websites for information and selections. All I am saying is that, to an extent, the article's observation is a valid one. Take it as it is presented. And by the way, this is not unique to Spanish books. English publishing I am sure decries the fall of Western Civilization every time the latest James Frey wannabe publishes yet another fake memoir.
  
• "Novelists and poets in Latin America are often prominent public intellectuals. In Mexico writers can still benefit from generous tax breaks, stipends and government appointments. 'The idea is that culture generates the nation,' says Álvaro Enrigue, a novelist." Now there is an idea, that culture generates the nation. And one that is seriously lacking in this nation.
  

The article gives a nice little overview of the book publishing industry in Spanish with a little history, just enough to give you a context. And why would you want to read this? Well, maybe you should consider the fact that a very large segment of the U.S. population reads in Spanish and probably make a pretty good market for those books as well. There is a reason after all why more libraries are expanding their Spanish books collections.

Review Article on Recent Books about Hugo Chávez

Citation for the review:

Guillermoprieto, Alma. "Don't Cry for Me, Venezuela." The New York Review of Books. 52.15 (October 6, 2005): 26-29.

This is a review of four recent books on Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Two of the books discussed are in Spanish. The article provides a good and brief overview of the Venezuelan leader, and it can be a starting point for anyone wanting to get a quick briefing about the man. Readers can also learn a little about recent Venezuelan history and politics. Chávez is presented as a man of contradictions: sometimes capitalist, other times seeing capitalism as "el demonio" (the demon), as welcoming private investment, but leaving little room for opposition (28). Yet Chávez has launched large social and educational programs while enjoying very high approval in his country. For readers in the United States, regardless of their politics, it may be wise to remember that the U.S. does import about 15% of its oil from Venezuela, so it may be wise to learn a little about the country and its leader. Since I do selection for books in Spanish, I will be ordering the two books, and passing a note to the history and political science specialist to consider the other two. If and when I look them over, readers can find notes on the books here as well.

Update note: (10/22/05): I just realized it may help if I put the information for the books the article mentions, so here goes. The information is as the article provided it:

Aleida Guevara. Chávez: Un Hombre Que Anda Por Ahí: Una Entrevista con Hugo Chávez, published by Ocean Press.

Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka. Hugo Chávez Sin Uniforme: Una Historia Personal, published by Random House Mondadori (Caracas).

Richard Gott. Hugo Chávez: The Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.

Colette Caprile. La Revolución Como Espéctaculo, published by Random House Mondadori (Caracas).

College English Article on Film The Matrix

The College English issue 32.3 (2005) has a very interesting article on the film The Matrix. The article, "Coded Discourse: Romancing the (Electronic) Shadow in The Matrix," is written by Jason Haslam. The article may be accessible electronically to those libraries who get Project Muse, or readers can check for a print copy at their library. College English is one of the journals I keep on my reading list, and for Project Muse periodicals, I have an alert set up with them so I get their tables of contents as they come out or are added to the database. Science fiction happens to be one of my academic areas of interest, so this article caught my attention. In addition, at least one of the freshman composition classes do papers on film and popular culture topics, and I have seen a share of students write on films like The Matrix. So I am also making this note to remind myself later about this article in case a student comes by.

The article itself provides a reading on the film that argues that the film, and cyberpunk in general, can be read as a critique of enlightenment subjectivity. The article then goes on to review how the film has been read by other critics. For instance, it provides a discussion of the film in racial terms. The film has been discussed as an African American narrative with the character of Morpheus as a father figure and the struggle of Zion as one of a fight against oppression and slavery. To support this, the author cites the work of Toni Morrison in Playing in the Dark where she argues that the story of a Black person is often taken over by White American literature. The second section of the article provides a brief discussion of gender issues looking at the characters of Neo and Trinity. The article then discusses the role of Oracle, and it looks at how that character may be representative of the stereotype of the mammy. All this leads to the situation where Neo becomes the Chosen One. However, as the other films reveal, there is the problem that there is no total freedom in the end. This is the conclusion the author leads the readers to. He concludes that the films may highlight the problem in Neo's and the Ai's power, but that neither Hollywood nor cyberpunk allow the politicized narratives to break to the surface. Those are left up to the viewers (107). (The author notes that he wrote his essay after the last film in the trilogy was released, but he is looking at the first film as a stand-alone piece. However, he uses reference to the other two films as necessary to the argument).

For students looking for a good example of a scholarly discussion of this film, with some notes on the genre of cyberpunk, this article will work. The article also includes good endnotes and an excellent bibliography.

I would like to explore further some of the narratives the author presents. The author mentions that this film falls within other science fiction films that use the alternate plot device where a character realizes the world around him/her is a fake. He mentions the work of Philip K. Dick (a favorite of mine) as an example, but I missed seeing a reference to the film Dark City. I think this may make for a possible research possibility for me later on. Another interesting reference was to the work of Nicola Nixon who sees the corporations in William Gibson's novel Neuromancer figured in orientalist terms and discusses the image of the cyberspace cowboy. I think it would be interesting to see how these ideas have progressed since the 1984 release of Neuromancer, considered the classic of cyberpunk.

TLS article on Ismail Kadare, winner of International Man Booker Prize

TLS: The Times Literary Supplement for June 24, 2005 has an article written by Robert Elsie on Albanian writer Ismail Kadare. The article, "Subtle Dissent of a Balkan Bard" provides a good overview of the author's works and life. The article may be of interest to readers of literary fiction who may want to learn more about this writer. I made a note previously that he is listed in The Guardian's list of ten overseas writers to read.

Interesting little items: on baseball and on blogs

1. Friday's Wall Street Journal features an article in the front page about baseball's tradition with numbers on players' uniforms. It specifically looks at pitchers, who by tradition, avoid wearing single digit numbers. I am sure most baseball hardcore fans know this, but to the casual observer like me, it is an interesting little piece of trivia and history.
2. The Indianapolis Nuvo Newspaper featured a little "story" on the lack of popularity of blogs. For a little chuckle or two, read the story here. It turns out the average Joe does not give a hoot about blogs, haha.
   

Some items of interest from _ARTNews_, April 2005 issue.

I just read through the April 2005 edition of ARTNews as part of my professional reading lists. Some items of interest:

The magazine reported that a recent exhibition by artist Leon Ferrari made leaders of the Catholic Church upset. The archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, declared the exhibition to be blasphemous, which then sparked protests and acts of violence as some protesters broke into the exhibition; there were also bomb threats. The 84 year old artist is a controversial figure. During the period of the dictatorship, he was exiled in Brazil because of his views. One example of his work is the piece titled Western and Christian Civilization (1965). It was made as a protest to the Vietnam War, and it depicts Christ crucified to a fighter jet. According to the article, the retrospective exhibit is based on the artitst's opposition to the concept of hell, which he defines as "the belief by part of the population that others deserve to be punished simply for not sharing their beliefs. It is the mother of all discrimination" (62). On the other side of the issue, Catholic priest Xavier Ryckeboer lobbied to have the exhibition closed using the argument that art cannot be used as a form of aggression. A judge did close the exhibit for 18 days, but it was reopened after an appeal. The article also points out that the Catholic Church has protested other art exhibits in Argentina. In one case, the head of a Buenos Aires art foundation resigned after "alleging in the press that she had been told not to exhibit any works related to 'sex, politics, or religion'"(62). The directors of the foundation deny any censorship but they do state they plan to reduce the number of offerings in terms of exhibitions.

So, no exhibitions featuring sex, politics or religion. So, what is left if you take out all the good stuff? Are they afraid of a little bit of subversive art? I am all for people choosing what they want or not to see, and if it conflicts with their religious views, it is their right to express themselves against it by not viewing it or sponsoring, and even protesting, but doing so in a peaceful way. To use the excuse of art causes aggression, given that all art at one point or another can be aggressive, is just that, an excuse. I am definitely not for people who want to censor and deny others the right to view or read or hear something and decide for themselves if it is for them or not. In this case, it is the Catholic Church, but that institution is certainly not the only one proposing censorship of works they can't stand. This seems to be another good illustration of why the concept of separation of Church and state seems like a good idea, but also it is another example why free thinkers should be aware and willing to denounce such efforts to stiffle creativity and intellectual pursuits. Anyhow, this is my little moment of passion over censors.

Another interesting piece is the feature piece by Linda Yablonsky, "What Makes a Painting a Painting?", that asks what is a painting in an age of hybrid forms of art. The article includes various statements by artists on what defines (or redefines, or simply does without definition) painting. Just keep in mind the last line provided by Russell Ferguson, senior curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, who says that ". . .every time you come up with an answer, you can think of something to contradict it."

Finally for now, Barbara Pollack's article "The Opening China" provides an overview of the growing art scene in China as more art galleries are opening and new millionaires are supporting the art.

_Art in America_ April Issue, from Australia to Porn to an American Master

The April 2005 issue of Art in America contains a few interesting pieces. For those in collection development, the Richard Kalina's review of De Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan may be of interest. For the casual reader, the review provides a nice overview of the life of American painter who lived from 1904 to 1997 and who "many believe to be the greatest and most influential American artist of the 20th century. . ." (49). This issue also features various art reports from different parts of the world. I found particularly interesting the Report from Australia written by Richard Kalina, "Down Under No More," which argues that Australia has become an art center in its own right. Good information for those who may be planning to travel and have an interest in art. Sarah Valdez writes a small photography article, "Body Double," about photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders who depicts the same subjects twice, once clothed and once nude. The photographer recently did this approach in a series of portraits of porn stars. It is interesting to see how different some people can appear with or without clothes. The artist did make sure that for the stars' nude portraits, they were done up as when on screen. Finally, Sarah Lewis writes about Kehinde Wiley's portraits of African-American males in her article "De(i)fying the Masters." The artist creates life size portraits of African-American men "standing in the postures of prophets, saints and angels from Renaissance paintings, or of male subjects from later European portraits" (121). The exhibition was recently shown in the Brooklyn Museum. In the process, the artist offers a critique of the European tradition as well as of the media's portrayal of the African-American male. The samples presented in the magazine are very good in terms of providing a sense of the exhibit, and they are good art as well.

Isabel Allende on giving

I recently came across this note from NPR. I am not a regular listener of NPR, but I do believe in the importance of public radio. At any rate, this comes from the program All Things Considered, where they had a small segment with Chilean author (and one of my favorite writers) Isabel Allende. It is one of the essays the program invites on the topic of "This I Believe." She wrote a small essay on the importance of giving to others and how giving to others connects her to others. I could not agree more. She writes towards the end of the essay:

"Give, give, give -- what is the point of having experience, knowledge or talent if I don't give it away? Of having stories if I don't tell them to others? Of having wealth if I don't share it? I don't intend to be cremated with any of it! It is in giving that I connect with others, with the world and with the divine."

You can find the text, and also a link to listen to her reading it at the link below. I know it reminded me of why I do what I do as an educator and now librarian. I know I thrive in teaching because it is giving to others. At any rate, go take a look.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4568464