My attitude this week can be summed up in four words: ready for a break!
I wish I could buy some time. Or even barter for it. Anyone have any
time they would like to get rid of? Do you have an hour you could loan
me? It might be very tired when I return it to you, but I would
appreciate it greatly! I could pay you in homemade baked goods. *sigh*
If only. Is it bad that I'm counting down the days until all my school work is turned
in? Hope not--it's helping to keep me sane during the final crunch!
My workload (at work and school) is set to increase exponentially over the next few weeks until all my school work is completed and submitted on May 10th. Part of this increase is self-imposed--I'm going out of town soon for a few days, and so work and school will be put on hold during this time. I'm working to manage my time and tasks wisely before and after my trip so that all work-related and school-related things are done on time. My trip could have had better timing, but it was planned around a set event (which I will probably post about with pictures upon my return), so there wasn't a whole lot of flexibility on when I could go. At work, some of my periodic duties seem to be occurring all at once, which is resulting in a higher-than-normal workload even without the consideration of my time off. So yeah, timing is not great. To make sure everything gets done when it should, my poor little check list feature on Outlook is working overtime to keep me organized. When time becomes a hot commodity, it's important to use all the tools at your disposal.
It will be particularly difficult to get internship work done when out of town. So, to account for this, I've been working a bit extra over the last couple of weeks. Between my extra hours and the last on-site day (scheduled for next month), I should be able to keep on task with hours and work even if I'm not able to spend any time on my laptop while I'm gone. Planning ahead is really going to let me enjoy myself without worrying about what still needs to be done.
And through all the chaos, the same mantra keeps repeating itself in my head: one more year, one more year, one more year...
Monday, April 22, 2013
Friday, April 19, 2013
Vocabulary Adventures Part 2 and Other Things Filling My Time
More work this week is coming to fruition. The second guide that I created for the MCFL staff has been reviewed, and I finally received feedback. Mostly it was an overwhelmingly positive review, with only one small change that was needed, and was quickly taken care of. Oddly enough, I found a discrepancy on the site when I went to double-check something for that small change. A selection menu that is supposed to allow multiple choices is only single-choice; admittedly, a small thing and one that's easily remedied--I found the place to enable the multiple selection feature. But before I go "fixing" things, I have to get permission. So along with the final draft of the guide, I included this conflict that I found so my site supervisor can decide if it does in fact need to be changed.
My other project-in-progress, the controlled vocabulary that I created, is now moving forward again. I had submitted the controlled vocabulary for review, went over everything with my site supervisor during my last on-site day and submitted a final draft; now I am able to take the next step of the process. Using the controlled vocabulary, I have to create a taxonomy on Drupal (this step has actually already been completed at the time this blog was written). The taxonomy is used to automatically generate a selection menu which users (the MCFL staff) can choose from as part of content classification. It will now be available to assign to new content. I also need this selection menu so that the controlled vocabulary can be assigned to forms, policies, and procedures already up on the site. The interface on Drupal for starting this process was very easy to understand and navigate for me since I'm already moderately familiar with Drupal (and becoming more so all the time). I was able to create and define my taxonomy in about an hour, maybe a little less. The next part of the process--assigning controlled vocabulary terms to existing content--is going to be much more time-consuming since I have to edit each content item individually. And I need to compare existing tags with the controlled vocabulary to make sure all relevant topics are being correctly assigned. Almost two hours of work didn't get me through all the forms yet, so I know I have a number of hours still ahead of me on this.
Lastly, I turned in a guide for library staff for adding content to the Resources by Subject pages on the library's public site. You can actually see this area here (scroll down to the Resources by Subject block). The guide explains how to add and edit the four types of content that can appear on the subject pages. See if you can find all four types! Only three weeks left of internship work, and it feels like I have enough to do now to fill those three weeks! And I still have my last on-site day to look forward to.
With my going on and on about my internship, you would think that I haven't had any other fun. Not true. With the warmer weather and Spring now holding fast, I ended up adding yet another planter to the collection slowly growing (forgive the pun) outside my front door. When Scooter and I had that garden project two years ago behind the apartment building where we live, we planted a small collection of herbs--which, two years later, are still growing strong. But we had no basil or thyme--both herbs that my Italian cooking must have! So, Scooter got my new planter situated and hanging off the rail (I've run out of ground space and have to build up), and I found two lovely specimens--one of basil, one of lemon thyme--that went into the planter. My fresh herb stock is now complete. Well, except for maybe Italian parsley. That would be nice to have growing on my porch too. I miss having a large garden full of growing things, but time is a precious commodity that I never seem to have enough of. Once I finish my MLIS, I keep telling myself, once school is done I will have the time for gardening and more cooking and more traveling.
Ah, well. On to more schoolwork!
My other project-in-progress, the controlled vocabulary that I created, is now moving forward again. I had submitted the controlled vocabulary for review, went over everything with my site supervisor during my last on-site day and submitted a final draft; now I am able to take the next step of the process. Using the controlled vocabulary, I have to create a taxonomy on Drupal (this step has actually already been completed at the time this blog was written). The taxonomy is used to automatically generate a selection menu which users (the MCFL staff) can choose from as part of content classification. It will now be available to assign to new content. I also need this selection menu so that the controlled vocabulary can be assigned to forms, policies, and procedures already up on the site. The interface on Drupal for starting this process was very easy to understand and navigate for me since I'm already moderately familiar with Drupal (and becoming more so all the time). I was able to create and define my taxonomy in about an hour, maybe a little less. The next part of the process--assigning controlled vocabulary terms to existing content--is going to be much more time-consuming since I have to edit each content item individually. And I need to compare existing tags with the controlled vocabulary to make sure all relevant topics are being correctly assigned. Almost two hours of work didn't get me through all the forms yet, so I know I have a number of hours still ahead of me on this.
Lastly, I turned in a guide for library staff for adding content to the Resources by Subject pages on the library's public site. You can actually see this area here (scroll down to the Resources by Subject block). The guide explains how to add and edit the four types of content that can appear on the subject pages. See if you can find all four types! Only three weeks left of internship work, and it feels like I have enough to do now to fill those three weeks! And I still have my last on-site day to look forward to.
With my going on and on about my internship, you would think that I haven't had any other fun. Not true. With the warmer weather and Spring now holding fast, I ended up adding yet another planter to the collection slowly growing (forgive the pun) outside my front door. When Scooter and I had that garden project two years ago behind the apartment building where we live, we planted a small collection of herbs--which, two years later, are still growing strong. But we had no basil or thyme--both herbs that my Italian cooking must have! So, Scooter got my new planter situated and hanging off the rail (I've run out of ground space and have to build up), and I found two lovely specimens--one of basil, one of lemon thyme--that went into the planter. My fresh herb stock is now complete. Well, except for maybe Italian parsley. That would be nice to have growing on my porch too. I miss having a large garden full of growing things, but time is a precious commodity that I never seem to have enough of. Once I finish my MLIS, I keep telling myself, once school is done I will have the time for gardening and more cooking and more traveling.
Ah, well. On to more schoolwork!
 |
| Basil and thyme are great planter partners! |
Friday, April 12, 2013
Guides, Guides, and More Guides
I like to write. I hope you can see that from my blog (if I didn't like writing, I would not have kept it going this long). And I like to write all kinds of things, including fiction stories--none of which have been published yet. Not that I've been trying to get them published, but I digress. It is in this spirit of enjoying writing that I seem to be so taken with writing guides for the Marin County Free Library staff--and I can only assume that my site supervisor is taking my strength and put it to this use on purpose.
Again this week I've been working on guides for the staff, two in particular. The Drupal guide I'm working on is a document that predates my time with MCFL, but it is desperate need of updating and the addition of a LOT of missing information. I'm fairly certain that the guide contains everything that was needed at the time it was made, but the library's website has grown and evolved since it was first debuted with the new look, which resulted in a lot of areas being created after this guide must have been put together. So my job is to update what's already in the guide, and add in the information that may be missing based on what options/settings/features/etc. are now available. Not an easy job. The guide is quite extensive; right now, it's a Word document that's over 75 pages in length, and there are still a lot of components missing from it that I have yet to add in. Before even adding in the new information, I had to comb through what was there to make sure instructions were current and links were still correct. I actually had to go back and change a lot of the URL pathways for links because they had changed. Drupal 6 (which is what the MCFL site runs on) has made way for Drupal 7 since the site first went live, and soon Drupal 8 will be released; as a result, Drupal 6 information has moved from its original location and I had to track it down again. Right now, all the information in the document is current; I'm now slowly adding in all the missing information, which takes awhile because I have to include how-to instructions for each process that needs to be added. This is a project that is spanning weeks.
My second project is creating another guide for MCFL staff that guides them through adding content to a specific area of the library's public site (my two previous guides had dealt solely with content procedures for the staff intranet). However, this guide is a little more complex that the first two because there are several types of content that can be added to this area, and each type follows a different process. One process is already partially outlined in another guide, so I merely needed to reference that guide then add the rest of the information. My biggest worry about this guide is that it will be too long. The Drupal guide, monster that it is, is only intended for the staff that works with administering the public site (aka the Webmasters Team); this second guide is intended for all library staff. I know people don't want to read a novel when a few pages would do. I'm alleviating part of my worry by including bookmarks in this guide; staff will be able to go directly to the area that they want for the content type they are trying to add and skip over the rest of the guide that they don't need.
This work will definitely carry over to next week, and possibly later than that. Back to writing!
Again this week I've been working on guides for the staff, two in particular. The Drupal guide I'm working on is a document that predates my time with MCFL, but it is desperate need of updating and the addition of a LOT of missing information. I'm fairly certain that the guide contains everything that was needed at the time it was made, but the library's website has grown and evolved since it was first debuted with the new look, which resulted in a lot of areas being created after this guide must have been put together. So my job is to update what's already in the guide, and add in the information that may be missing based on what options/settings/features/etc. are now available. Not an easy job. The guide is quite extensive; right now, it's a Word document that's over 75 pages in length, and there are still a lot of components missing from it that I have yet to add in. Before even adding in the new information, I had to comb through what was there to make sure instructions were current and links were still correct. I actually had to go back and change a lot of the URL pathways for links because they had changed. Drupal 6 (which is what the MCFL site runs on) has made way for Drupal 7 since the site first went live, and soon Drupal 8 will be released; as a result, Drupal 6 information has moved from its original location and I had to track it down again. Right now, all the information in the document is current; I'm now slowly adding in all the missing information, which takes awhile because I have to include how-to instructions for each process that needs to be added. This is a project that is spanning weeks.
My second project is creating another guide for MCFL staff that guides them through adding content to a specific area of the library's public site (my two previous guides had dealt solely with content procedures for the staff intranet). However, this guide is a little more complex that the first two because there are several types of content that can be added to this area, and each type follows a different process. One process is already partially outlined in another guide, so I merely needed to reference that guide then add the rest of the information. My biggest worry about this guide is that it will be too long. The Drupal guide, monster that it is, is only intended for the staff that works with administering the public site (aka the Webmasters Team); this second guide is intended for all library staff. I know people don't want to read a novel when a few pages would do. I'm alleviating part of my worry by including bookmarks in this guide; staff will be able to go directly to the area that they want for the content type they are trying to add and skip over the rest of the guide that they don't need.
This work will definitely carry over to next week, and possibly later than that. Back to writing!
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Pasta Sauce
This is going to be a shorter post. I made homemade pasta sauce last night for pasta using a recipe I made up on the spot--and it turned out really good! I did remember to note ingredients and amounts down so I could share here.
What you'll need:
6 sprigs of fresh rosemary, each 2-3 inches long
8 small fresh sage leaves (or 5 large leaves)
3-4 sprigs of fresh oregano
3-4 sprigs of fresh thyme
6-8 cloves of garlic
2 medium shallots
3 Tbs. olive oil
1/2 c. cognac
1 6-oz. can of tomato paste
1 14.5-oz. can of diced tomatoes
1/4 c. water
1 Tbs. brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 c. half & half or cream
6 gourmet sausages (Aidells makes really tasty ones)
1 lb. linguine pasta, cooked
What you'll need to do:
1. Clean the rosemary, sage, oregano, thyme, and garlic; for the fresh herbs, keep the leaves and toss the stems. Put everything into a wooden chopping bowl and chop until fine (or use a food processor). Set aside. Dice the shallots and set aside. Cut up the sausages into large chunks (I cut each sausage into three pieces).
2. In a large skillet over medium heat, add the olive oil and heat until it is just starting to shimmer. Add the herbs and garlic mix and cook for 1-2 minutes as you stir. Add the shallots and cook for another 3-5 minutes,stirring occasionally, until the shallots are soft and are starting to become transparent.
3. Add the cognac and deglaze the pan, scraping up any bits stuck to the bottom. Continue cooking until the cognac reduces by about half. Add the tomato paste and diced tomatoes (including the juice) and mix everything together until well blended. Add the water (you can add more if you want a thinner sauce) and mix it in. Bring to simmering, then reduce heat to low, cover the skillet, and simmer for 10-15 minutes.
4. Add the brown sugar and the salt and pepper. Taste the sauce to make sure you have a good balance of salty and sweet. Add the half & half, mix in completely, then stir in the sausages. Re-cover and simmer for 3-5 minutes.
5. Remove from heat. Serve hot over cooked linguine pasta.
I know I've said it before, but fresh herbs make all the difference. In homemade pasta sauce, that's doubly true. Enjoy!
What you'll need:
6 sprigs of fresh rosemary, each 2-3 inches long
8 small fresh sage leaves (or 5 large leaves)
3-4 sprigs of fresh oregano
3-4 sprigs of fresh thyme
6-8 cloves of garlic
2 medium shallots
3 Tbs. olive oil
1/2 c. cognac
1 6-oz. can of tomato paste
1 14.5-oz. can of diced tomatoes
1/4 c. water
1 Tbs. brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 c. half & half or cream
6 gourmet sausages (Aidells makes really tasty ones)
1 lb. linguine pasta, cooked
What you'll need to do:
1. Clean the rosemary, sage, oregano, thyme, and garlic; for the fresh herbs, keep the leaves and toss the stems. Put everything into a wooden chopping bowl and chop until fine (or use a food processor). Set aside. Dice the shallots and set aside. Cut up the sausages into large chunks (I cut each sausage into three pieces).
2. In a large skillet over medium heat, add the olive oil and heat until it is just starting to shimmer. Add the herbs and garlic mix and cook for 1-2 minutes as you stir. Add the shallots and cook for another 3-5 minutes,stirring occasionally, until the shallots are soft and are starting to become transparent.
3. Add the cognac and deglaze the pan, scraping up any bits stuck to the bottom. Continue cooking until the cognac reduces by about half. Add the tomato paste and diced tomatoes (including the juice) and mix everything together until well blended. Add the water (you can add more if you want a thinner sauce) and mix it in. Bring to simmering, then reduce heat to low, cover the skillet, and simmer for 10-15 minutes.
4. Add the brown sugar and the salt and pepper. Taste the sauce to make sure you have a good balance of salty and sweet. Add the half & half, mix in completely, then stir in the sausages. Re-cover and simmer for 3-5 minutes.
5. Remove from heat. Serve hot over cooked linguine pasta.
I know I've said it before, but fresh herbs make all the difference. In homemade pasta sauce, that's doubly true. Enjoy!
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Making Lemonade
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Well, I had to make lots of lemonade this week. Scooter's car got broken into, and although we were extremely lucky because the car was still there and nothing in it was taken (even though Scooter had cash and tools in the backseat), there was still damage done that we're now having to deal with. Another small blessing is that our insurance has been very helpful and responded quickly.
Then late in the week, I broke my website I had been using for class assignments in my Drupal class. Yes, broke. It was due to two modules (packets of code installed on the Drupal software) being incompatible with each other. The result? My entire website being replaced with a blank page and one line of text describing an error (and not the usual web errors). Of course I panicked, and when my efforts to restore things didn't work I was literally in tears. All my work for the past 10 weeks...gone. Then I remembered when we had to create backup sites earlier in the semester; my backup site was also displaying the same error, but I realized the content had to still be on the server. Checking my server files proved me right. Thank heavens. It took another three hours to fix the problem, but eventually I got my site working again.
So between Scooter's car and my website, things were chaotic this week, and my internship hours and Drupal assignments for the week suffered a major setback. It's a good thing that my instructor and my site supervisor know that life sometimes happens. It's a reality that I think everyone who works with adult students must acknowledge. I have to be aware of it myself, as I work with adult students at my job too. My instructor gave me a few extra days to complete my Drupal work for the week (and I actually got the extension before my site broke--I call that good timing). My site supervisor told me not to worry, that I'm doing excellent work, and that I shouldn't let the internship be cause of needless stress.
Things turned out okay, and even though we're still dealing with the aftermath of Scooter's car, life has calmed down a bit. The lemonade isn't outstanding, but it's at least a little sweet.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
What Tangled Webs We Weave
I know that I'm not the only one who's been following Edwin Meller Press lately. I've seen reports and updates on its recent actions in the weekly ALA Direct email newsletters. For those of you who have not been following this series of events as closely, here's a bit of background (with lots of other articles included that you can follow up with and read for yourself).
It all started when a librarian, Dale Askey, criticized Edwin Meller Press for the quality of its publications on a blog post written in 2010. Now, for those of you not in the profession, it is considered part of a librarian's job to examine materials for a library collection and judge whether or not the item is suitable in both content and form. Poorly-bound books would likely be returned to the publisher that sent them because they would not be able to have a long shelf life, requiring the library to repurchase the title if it wanted to keep the title in the collection. Likewise, an item of poor scholarship quality may be returned or passed over because it would not as adequately discuss/explore a topic as other items addressing the same topic would; librarians would try to choose the titles of highest quality to ensure that library funds are spent smartly. And to get this information about items prior to making a purchase, librarians turn to reviews--which are written by publishers, book/item reviewers, and even other librarians. Libraries can't afford to waste money, so librarians will utilize many sources to help them make educated guesses about the value of an item for their collection. So back to Dale Askey. He was providing his own opinion about the materials from Edwin Meller on the blog; the post is no longer on the actual blog, but is available through web archiving (yay for web archiving!). And it seems that Edwin Meller took exception to his criticism. Initially two lawsuits were filed, one against Askey and one against Askey and McMaster University (where he works); since the lawsuits were originally filed, the one against both Askey and McMaster has been dropped, but the one against Askey alone still stands.
And so begins the back-and-forth between Edwin Meller and librarians. Currently, the publisher has stepped up its game and is suing another librarian. Rick Anderson is now the target of a second lawsuit because of his criticisms regarding Edwin Meller and the actions taken against Askey. Anderson's criticisms also took form in a blog; both posts regarding Edwin Meller have been archived (since they were taken down too) and can be seen here and here. The whole situation has gained a lot of attention in the profession and in higher education, and has spawned both petitions to tell Edwin Meller to lay off the lawsuits and a parody Twitter account. I know the saying goes that there is no such thing as bad press, but I can't imagine that Edwin Meller will be able to come out ahead in this.
Since I have no experience with this particular publisher, I have no way to personally attest to the accuracy of Dale Askey's claims. My reason for bringing up this series of events is to illustrate how easily something that we take for granted in a "free" country--being able to criticize a business, a person, a government--can be challenged. Think about all of the websites out there that are solely used to rate or review goods or services: Angie's List, Yelp, even sites that allow customer reviews like Amazon. If we are not allowed to be critical about a product or service, how are we going to be able to tell the wheat from the chaff? And let's be realistic: there is a lot of chaff out there. It's not really that big of a stretch to see that challenging the right of a librarian to criticize the quality of an item is challenging the right to criticize anything. At the core, it's an act of censorship.
I can't divine what Edwin Meller's true motives are and what they hope to gain from these lawsuits, but like some other bloggers I've read I think these lawsuits will cause more damage to the publisher than good.
It all started when a librarian, Dale Askey, criticized Edwin Meller Press for the quality of its publications on a blog post written in 2010. Now, for those of you not in the profession, it is considered part of a librarian's job to examine materials for a library collection and judge whether or not the item is suitable in both content and form. Poorly-bound books would likely be returned to the publisher that sent them because they would not be able to have a long shelf life, requiring the library to repurchase the title if it wanted to keep the title in the collection. Likewise, an item of poor scholarship quality may be returned or passed over because it would not as adequately discuss/explore a topic as other items addressing the same topic would; librarians would try to choose the titles of highest quality to ensure that library funds are spent smartly. And to get this information about items prior to making a purchase, librarians turn to reviews--which are written by publishers, book/item reviewers, and even other librarians. Libraries can't afford to waste money, so librarians will utilize many sources to help them make educated guesses about the value of an item for their collection. So back to Dale Askey. He was providing his own opinion about the materials from Edwin Meller on the blog; the post is no longer on the actual blog, but is available through web archiving (yay for web archiving!). And it seems that Edwin Meller took exception to his criticism. Initially two lawsuits were filed, one against Askey and one against Askey and McMaster University (where he works); since the lawsuits were originally filed, the one against both Askey and McMaster has been dropped, but the one against Askey alone still stands.
And so begins the back-and-forth between Edwin Meller and librarians. Currently, the publisher has stepped up its game and is suing another librarian. Rick Anderson is now the target of a second lawsuit because of his criticisms regarding Edwin Meller and the actions taken against Askey. Anderson's criticisms also took form in a blog; both posts regarding Edwin Meller have been archived (since they were taken down too) and can be seen here and here. The whole situation has gained a lot of attention in the profession and in higher education, and has spawned both petitions to tell Edwin Meller to lay off the lawsuits and a parody Twitter account. I know the saying goes that there is no such thing as bad press, but I can't imagine that Edwin Meller will be able to come out ahead in this.
Since I have no experience with this particular publisher, I have no way to personally attest to the accuracy of Dale Askey's claims. My reason for bringing up this series of events is to illustrate how easily something that we take for granted in a "free" country--being able to criticize a business, a person, a government--can be challenged. Think about all of the websites out there that are solely used to rate or review goods or services: Angie's List, Yelp, even sites that allow customer reviews like Amazon. If we are not allowed to be critical about a product or service, how are we going to be able to tell the wheat from the chaff? And let's be realistic: there is a lot of chaff out there. It's not really that big of a stretch to see that challenging the right of a librarian to criticize the quality of an item is challenging the right to criticize anything. At the core, it's an act of censorship.
I can't divine what Edwin Meller's true motives are and what they hope to gain from these lawsuits, but like some other bloggers I've read I think these lawsuits will cause more damage to the publisher than good.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Look what the Easter Bunny brought!
For the first time in a long time, the extended family came to spend a holiday with us. It was more circumstance rather than distance that has caused my family to spend holidays with just us. Yesterday I got to see relatives that I haven't seen for a year or more in some cases, and it was a day of good food, laughter, and a tortellini faux pas that my mom will never live down (well, not in the next year at least--love you Mom!).
Something that my mom makes every year for Easter for as long as I can remember is a lamb cake. I don't have the recipe, but it uses a cake mold that she got years and years ago and brings out only at this annual event. The cake is a white cake frosted with white frosting and coconut to simulate the soft fleece of a lamb. As you can see below, the cake also sports accessories and a grassy patch on which to sit. This is something I wait for every year, and despite having some other truly scrumptious desserts to enjoy thanks to my cousin, I still had to have a piece of my favorite lamb cake delivered straight from the Easter Bunny (and complete with jellybean eggs). Yum!
This is a short post, but I couldn't resist sharing. :) Another post (and possibly another recipe) will follow later this week.
Something that my mom makes every year for Easter for as long as I can remember is a lamb cake. I don't have the recipe, but it uses a cake mold that she got years and years ago and brings out only at this annual event. The cake is a white cake frosted with white frosting and coconut to simulate the soft fleece of a lamb. As you can see below, the cake also sports accessories and a grassy patch on which to sit. This is something I wait for every year, and despite having some other truly scrumptious desserts to enjoy thanks to my cousin, I still had to have a piece of my favorite lamb cake delivered straight from the Easter Bunny (and complete with jellybean eggs). Yum!
 |
| Lamb cake: a perfect sweet dessert for Easter. |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)