23 More Things on a Stick

For those of you familiar with the Minnesota State Fair, there are many many things you can eat on a stick.

For librarians, there is an online program in Minnesota called "23 More Things on a Stick" to help us learn more about Web 2.0 technologies. Over the next 17 weeks, I will be learning how to use different Web 2.0 tools. Some will be "old hat", and some will be brand new, and I will be posting entries about these Web 2.0 tools as I learn about them.

Barriers to Critical Thinking

On Wednesday evening, there will be a panel discussion on campus on a topic whose name alone stirs up a great deal of controversy. Some people will call it the Israeli Occupation, some people will call it the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, some people will call it a massacre, some people will call it revenge, some people will call it just desserts. It is very easy for people who live thousands of miles away from the Middle East to sit back in their armchairs and name things.

In any case, a passage from the original notice posted to a faculty listserv regarding this panel discussion caused a great deal of controversy in its tone:

Since the Palestinians elected the Islamic Movement Hamas in 2006, Israel has sealed off Gaza from the outside world, and has been starving it ever since. Just before the inauguration of Barak Obama, while the world was celebrating Christmas, Israel assaulted Gaza from air, sea and land spreading death and destruction on a largely disarmed, starved and scared population for 23 days. In the US media, this war crime went largely unreported, although US taxpayer funds it and US politicians provide cover for it. This panel aims to educate the public, mourn the dead, and express solidarity with those who survived.

A faculty member, concerned about the tone of the email, asked the following question:

Will the panel provide the other sides of the story?

The response he received offlist:

"You have the whole world demonizing the Palestinians for you, and am sure you do a great job yourself. You don't need me to do that for you."

This caused someone else to post the following:

The poster attached to the scsu-announce is obnoxious, insensitive and vulgar....all words used when swastikas were found on campus last year. The juxtaposition of the recent violence in Gaza with actual historical photos of the Nazi Holocaust in Europe is completely inappropriate. If the HURL professors want to speak on behalf of Palestinians and Gaza and Hamas...so be it, but their suggestion that Israel, Jews, are equal to Nazis....is completely out of line and does not belong in a university which is supposedly on guard for such vulgar manipulation of discourse.

The announce list should not be a means of such mean-spirited views.

I have stood with two of these professors in solidarity....I will not be silent. Their opposition to Israeli policies is obvious, the use of Nazi photos goes far beyond that opposition.

Which finally led to the poster of the original announcement to respond:

This is not the space to respond to Dr. Edelheit's attack on the forum Gaza 2009. The accusation of the connection of this panel with the swastikas found on campus last year is unfounded,and inappropriate. There are no Nazi photos in the flyer. There are photos of two ghettos that were both sealed off, starved, and disarmed.

Peace comes only with proper historical understanding of injustice, and no other place is more equipped to do that than a university. If we are interested in pursuing peace, we should try to understand the situation from the perspective of the most helpless victims. Closing discussion only prolongs the injustice. We welcome all views and questions in this forum.

With the exception of one poster, who asked a simple one sentence question, all other posters involved accused each other of terrible things, made assumptions about each other's political beliefs, and ended up closing dialogue before it could even begin. If participants in the panel discussion perpetuate such behavior, are they truly engaged in educating students about what is happening in Gaza right now, or are they going to mis-educate students into prejudice and one-sided information?

For the record, I am not against the creation of a Palestinian state. I am, however, against faculty setting a bad example of ad hominem for students.

The Film Hunter

I volunteer for a local film festival. My job is to locate films for the festival as well as to review them. Although it sounds like great fun (which it is), finding the films, filmmakers, and production companies takes perseverance, as well as some dirty tricks.

First, I locate the contact information for production companies that make or distribute films containing the subject matter that would be appropriate for the festival. After visiting their websites, I contact those companies to ask them for "screener copies" of films that we would like to review. This is the easiest part. Unfortunately, public performance rights to show these films is not cheap, and so I must also rely on other venues for potential films.

My next stop to find new films and potential filmmakers are video websites. Video Menu and Reelseo provide many links to video sharing websites aside from YouTube. The research fun starts here, as I must use different keywords to search for potential films and filmmakers that cover the topics that our film festival celebrates. Quite often I find shorts this way, or promo trailers from independent or student filmmakers. I locate their websites, as well as their email addresses, and ask them for screener copies of their work to review. They are very happy to share what they have. If the reviewing committee wants to show these films, quite often they are free or at little cost to us.

Third, I subscribe to email lists, Facebook sites, MySpace sites, and LiveJournal sites for film festivals that show similar films. I find out what these film festivals are showing, look up those film makers or distribution companies, and request screeners. This is my dirty little film research trick, but I am sure that all other film hunters must do this as well.

Finally, I talk to a lot of people about my "job" as a film hunter. You would be surprised how many people say "You know, I have a friend who just made a film..." or "I have a friend in film school..." I leave no stone unturned; I get the friend's contact information and get a screener. This is a research strategy as well!

Subject Headings Gone Wrong

During her presentation on subject headings, Professor Gross brought up the fact that many subject headings to describe ethnic groups or the LGBT community are often dated, inaccurate, and offensive. Librarians such as Sanford Berman have worked hard to create and revise subject headings that describe the LGBT community as well as modern phenomenon ("krumping", for example). Their work is thankless and rarely recognized by anyone except librarians, but without it, people would have a difficult time using the library catalog to find books that address new trends in culture, technology, and other areas. Poor subject headings in the library catalog restrict people's access to books on the shelves.

There is one subject heading that has always bothered me. This is the subject heading "Cookery". While inoffensive compared to "sexual minorities" or "drug addicts", people are less likely to do a subject search using the term "cookery" than they would for "homosexual" or "queer". At the same time, more people use public libraries to borrow cookbooks than LGBT materials. Why has "cookery" remained an ignored, archaic subject heading, not changed to "cooking" by the Library of Congress?

Some people have justified the use of "cookery" as a subject heading because they are under the impression that "cuisine" only refers to French cooking, or fine dining. "Gastronomy", a more encompassing term, refers to the art and science of cooking but would not necessarily be appropriate for a book that only contained recipes and no culinary lore or food science. It is also another one of those "frou frou" terms which many Americans think is solely associated with fine dining.

For the past eight years, I worked as a librarian at a culinary school. I assisted chefs and culinary students with their research, and showed them how to use our library catalog quite often. Not one of them ever used the term "cookery" in a keyword search, and not one of them would use the term in their everyday or academic discourse about working with food. As the cataloger for our collection, I made the merciful decision to modify the LC subject headings to say "cooking" instead of "cookery". It became a lot easier for people to find the books they needed, and more people used the catalog to search on their own. One day, I will take up this fight with the Library of Congress.

The United States of Africa

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, elected president of the African Union, calls for the 53 African nations to form the United States of Africa.

If Gaddafi is serious about this, he is going to have his work cut out for him. Although it is possible that forming an African coalition like the European Union may improve the economy of African nations in the long run, will it make peace between rival nations and rival tribes?

Finding My Favorite Girl Scout Cookies

It is Girl Scout Cookie season, and one of my colleagues brought in the order form for cookies. Of course, I decide to buy some as a gesture of goodwill. I was incredibly eager to get some more "Thanks-A-Lot" cookies, as well as my annual supply of Caramel deLites.

A glance at the order form revealed the following: no "Thanks-A-Lot" cookies, and my Caramel deLites were called Samoas. I hadn't heard Caramel deLites called Samoas since the '70's. I was under the impression that the Samoan community had gotten offended somehow, and so the Girl Scouts changed their name.

Something about all of this conflicting information bothered me. If the Girl Scouts of America are a national organization, wouldn't the cookies that they sold be the same in all 50 states?

I Googled "girl scout cookies" in the attempt to solve this information emergency. Not only did I learn about the history of Girl Scout Cookies, but I also found out that Girl Scout Cookies are only allowed to be baked by two licensed baking companies--ABC/Interbake Company (the company that makes my "Thank You" cookies) and Little Brownie Bakers (who still call Carmel Delites Samoas). This means that next year, I will have to order my Girl Scout Cookies from a troop selling cookies from ABC/Interbake (as each individual troop has the freedom to choose their Girl Scout Cookie baker).

The Story of Middle English

I studied Middle English in college. From 1066-1500, the English language had no standardized spelling or grammar rules because different ethnicities within England spoke different versions of the language we now know as English, the nobility spoke French, and the clergy only considered those who could read and write Latin as literate.

If you want a taste of Middle English, you can visit the much abridged online version of the MED (Middle English Dictionary) here.

Some English scholars believe that modern English began with the Chancery Standard, developed by King Henry VIII to ensure that the nobility used English as opposed to French or Latin. After the development of the Chancery Standard, all court business was handled in this form of English. In 1470, William Caxton brought the Gutenberg Press to England, and the Chancery Standard was used in mass produced books as well as hornbooks used to teach children how to read.

Other English scholars believe that modern English began in 1755, when writer Samuel Johnson wrote his dictionary.