Scouts

This probably does not come as any surprise to you, reader, but I was never much one for playing sports in elementary or high school. My replacement (by choice) for these typical extracurricular activates was Boy Scouts.

Fall Semester, 2010

Today marks the beginning of my final semester as an MSLIS student at Syracuse. It is frankly a bit odd to say that, but it is true. I will have been in graduate school for about a year and a half, much shorter (it seems) than many of my fellow classmates. I hope this semester is a great conclusion to the degree, as I am certainly taking some interesting courses:

Three Aspects of Teaching Architecture

I read this statement, part of a larger conversation with architecture students at Rice and Louis Kahn. Though he is discussing how to teach architecture, I think there are some great points that can be applied to librarianship as well. So, without further ado, here is the quote:

Library Robots

As it does every Wednesday, my American Libraries email from the ALA arrived in my inbox. It's pretty dense, but I usually glean about five articles from each email, and the best article from this week was this one, I think:

Downtime

I am halfway through my second (of two) weeks off from school. Classes start on Monday, and so I have a few precious days remaining in my break. What have I been doing? As you read yesterday, the Mrs. and I visited Kansas City, but much of my downtime has been filled with catching up on my reading, and I have loved this.

Kansas City, 2010

Despite our regular posts on Friday and yesterday, Jen and I were in Kansas City this weekend. It was our first long road trip (9.5 hours) through multiple states (Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri), but we really had a great time. While they are fresh on my mind, I would like to share with you what we did and some thoughts from the trip.

Putting the "W" in Jason W. Dean

You might have noticed recently here on The Dean Files that I have added my middle initial to my "display name." I did this only after overcoming a large reservation on my part - people that use their middle initials all the time (seem to me) to be a bit, well, snooty. So why did I choose to ignore this reservation and add my middle initial? Well, there are two salient points to this little discourse, I think.

Higher Education and Me

As I have mentioned in the past, I read most of my updates and such through Times for iPad and Flipboard. I recently discovered (through Flipboard) this article, which was fascinating to me:

Meritocrats, by Tony Judt

Though not explicitly mentioned in the title, this post was all about the merits and purposes of higher education. And though I did not attend Oxford or Cambridge, I share many of the same thoughts about higher education as Mr. Judt shares in the article - and reading that article inspired me to write about what my higher education has meant to me.

Rediscovering my "Lost Albums"

I think we all have albums from our past that we don't want to ever recognize that we loved as teenagers. The albums you hear on the radio from time to time - when you hear them you think How did I ever think this was good? Stuff that is so patently bad that for a moment you question the whole of your taste in music? I think mine were Bush and Alanis Morrissette. My aversion to these albums caused me to lump everything that I liked at that time together in a whole pile of musical bad - something I wanted to sweep under the proverbial rug and forget about.

Well, a recent gift from Jen helped bring some of this forgotten, or "lost" music out, and back into my listening repertoire. A few weeks back, she surprised me with this album:

The New Yorker, August 9, 2010

Articles
Talk of the Town
Comment: Leaks, by Amy Davidson (p. 21)
Dept. of Bivalves: Afloat, by Raffi Khatchadourian (p. 25)

Reading and Me

I don't think this will come as any major surprise to you, reader: I love to read.

Conclusion of Summer School

Remember when you were in High School, and the term "summer school" had strongly negative connotations? It's where the bad kids went - and the good kids were threatened with it if they didn't "get their act together." Well, I never wanted to go to summer school in high school, but I confess to you that I love summer school in my undergraduate and graduate work.

Unplugged Challenge Video

Not to toot my own horn, but check out my video in the Unplugged Challenge:

Your Brain on Computers - The Unplugged Challenge

Also, Michelle Francl's submission is pretty darn interesting!

Times for the iPad Thoughts

I received an email yesterday from Sam Duncan about a little app for the iPad called, simply, Times. Times for the iPad is another feed display app, so that it takes my favorite feeds from the web, and presents them in one easy to use, reference, and read spot. As a matter of fact, here's how The Dean Files looks in it:

Recent and Upcoming Exhibitions

Jen and I love going to exhibitions here in Fort Worth, because (for the most part) they are free and consistently wonderful. I would like to focus on a few of our recent favorites, and then talk about one upcoming show. All of these shows either have been, are, or will be at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

Books and Literacy in the Digital Age Article Thoughts

As you have surely read now, as a part of my ALA membership, I get the American Libraries magazine every month. While in Lubbock, I finished up the latest (August 2010) issue, and had some thoughts on one of the articles:

Books and Literacy in the Digital Age, by Ralph Raab

I must admit that I, like the author, have a love for the physical book - so much so that we have 274 books in our library at this time. I think the only e-books we have are the ones that came free with our iPad. I love them for many reasons that Raab mentions (as so many others before him have mentioned) but the best thing about a book to me is the reading experience. Not holding a book, or how it smells, but how the text is highly readable on the page in most any lighting conditions. In addition, a book (with some effort) will always "be there" meaning that in 200 years, one can still access and use the majority of books we have today - but the digital nature of e-books does not hold the same guarantee.

National Ranching Heritage Center

Jen and I recently went up to visit the National Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock, Texas. I had been only as a child, and I remembered what a neat place it was. It was even better as an adult - here are some of my photos from the day:

The New Yorker, August 2, 2010

As usual, here is my post about this week's New Yorker. Enjoy!

Is Information More Valid in Print?

Most every morning I wake up, brew a pot of coffee, and check up on the news with the New York Times on the iPad, and I might look at the NYT crossword on my iPhone. I usually won't start the crossword until after my first cup of coffee, so I am a bit sharper. My news primarily comes from electronic resources, although Jen and I recently discussed subscribing to the Times daily delivery. (Man, that's expensive!) In the online content of the Times earlier this week, I read this article about the perception of printed versus electronically delivered news:

Bits: Readers Are Abandoning Print, Yet Don't Trust the Web, by Claire Cain Miller

This article raised the question in my mind: Why do readers see print sources (books, papers, magazines, etc) as being more authoritative over the same content found online? Take, for example, this quote from the article:

The New Yorker, July 26, 2010

Apparently, The New Yorker is slow in getting these to me, so much so that I received two issues in the same week. Oh, well. So, following the format I set here, I'll share with you my reading in this issue.

Some Short Personal Updates

Readers,

I just wanted to share with you some updates on a variety of things. First, my brother Zach came to visit, which was fun! We all had a great time, and I made a video of some of the things we did. Check it out:

Libraries and Infographics

So, I'll just come right out and say it: libraries need more cool infographics. To be fair, I didn't really know what an infographic was until recently. Our GOOD magazines actually have a fair number of them, as does Dwell, but I didn't know they had a name until I started using the Flipbook app on our iPad extensively. If (like I was until recently) you are unaware of what an infographic is, check out this handy article on the source of all of mankind's knowledge, Wikipedia:

"Information graphics." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.