Category: Random Thoughts

Things that never end are boring. It’s not that you have to know when, specifically, something will end, but knowing that it will or can at some point changes our engagement with whatever-it-is.

I’ve always thought I wished my favorite books would never end, but that’s not actually true. The prospect of an ending catches me in between the desire to swallow a good book in one sitting and the desire to ration my reading to stave off the inevitability of reaching that last period. I’ve also slogged through my share of books that felt like they’d never end. I’d keep a running tally in my head of chapters and pages left between me and the sweet release of that back cover. That back cover became the dominant experience of the book for me. Even the cycle of having books come in and out of print makes owning copies of precious books that much more special. And imagine how life would have been if The Never Ending Story actually never had ended? It hardly bears contemplating!

A few weeks ago, I thought I had nearly recovered from the mysterious health issues that have been my constant companions for well over a year and a half now. With an end finally in sight, I suddenly found myself willing to talk about this stuff for the first time with people outside my closest circle of friends. Maybe having an end point waiting in the wings made me less afraid of either boring people or of sounding whiny or pathetic. I don’t know. All I know is that the ability to stick mostly to the past tense unlocked the topic, made it palatable. (Now, though, I think I’ll relegate it back to “most boring topic I’m obsessed with” status and hope that an end point creeps back into view sometime soon.)

All this makes me wonder about times when ends or lacks of ends may have influenced the kinds of discussions we’ve had in librarianship, and the levels of enthusiasm we were able to feel for those discussions. I wonder if implying the end of the mostly un-named Library 1.0 reinvigorated interest and discussion in libraries in general no matter which side of the Library 2.0 debate you fell on. And I wonder if the liberating concept of “perpetual beta” has, after all, sapped some of the life out of discussions of new services and tools these days. I read a line in a zine* this week that implied that it’s hard to write a story when you don’t feel you know its ending, and if everything from interfaces to service points are constantly and rapidly evolving, it can be hard to think of stories to tell that feel more cohesive than a brief status update.

*Joe Biel. “In Sickness and in Health.” The Perfect Mix Tape Segue. Number 5.

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So, I did a semi-impulsive thing: I registered a domain name and set up some server space. Now, when I say “I” I actually mean the amazing people at LIShost. I haven’t actually lifted a finger yet because I’m a little intimidated by the whole thing. (By the way, Blake has already blown me away with his customer service and it’s only been a day since I asked him to put things in motion for me. He’s incredibly tolerant of stupid questions, too.) Also, when I say “semi-impulsive” I mean “been thinking about it for 2 years but was too scared until now.”

Imagine my excitement this morning when I opened the email that announced the birth of my very own web space. So cute! So full of potential (and nothing else). So…. and then I actually read the email. It started off just fine. I reproduce all but the sensitive parts here:

Welcome aboard LISHost!
Here are the details for your new domain, [my domain, which I’ll reveal when there’s anything to reveal]:

You are on the server named [server name], with an IP address of [IP address]

Me: Oh yay! … Hmmm… I wonder why it’s important that I know that IP address. WHAT HAVE I DONE??? Ok, calm down. Keep reading.

Answers to many of your questions can be found at:
http://www.lishost.net/support/

Me: good, good, I’m sure I’ll have questions. I sure hope those answers aren’t written in Geek. Moving on…

When you are ready to go live with your domain on this server, make sure you have changed your DNS entry with your registrar to use our DNS servers:
[information about something called a Name Server…Hmmm]

Me: DNS? I’ll have to look that up later. “Name Server” too. So things aren’t live yet. Ok. That makes sense. I assume it’ll be apparent when I arrive at this “go live” point. I’ll worry about DNSs then. For now, just make it through this email…

Your domain will NOT go live until the DNS is updated. DNS takes time to update, so your domain may not be live for several hours Directions on how to test your domain before you go live can be found here: [URL]

Me: So much about this DNS thing. It must be important. [makes notes to look it up when I get home] And testing? Before going live? Makes sense. Also seems to indicate that things might not work. THINGS MIGHT NOT WORK? WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO??? Ok, breathe. You have friends to help you. Just keep reading for now.

**After you have made those changes to your DNS settings, BE SURE to let us know so we can add you to our DNS server.**

Me: ENOUGH WITH THE DNS THING ALREADY. SAYING IT MORE OFTEN WON’T HELP ME UNDERSTAND! Ok, Here’s some username and temporary password information. Now that language I’m familiar with. [sighs at the relief of seeing words strung together that make sense] Then…

To change your password for your username, connect using SSH to either [server name], or your domain, or the IP address: [IP address]

Me: All of this makes sense except for the “connect using SSH” part. I’ve heard of SSH, and I’m pretty sure it’s not animal, mineral, or vegetable, but that’s about all I’m sure of. [gives up on taking notes of vocabulary to learn … tears up previously taken notes, balls them up, and flings them despondently toward the recycling bin .. skims over the next few lines which list the directories I have … wonders what “log files” are, and figures that “cgi-bin” has little to do with trash bins … scrolls till the end]

Something to keep in mind, your domain name may not be live right now. The DNS system can make up to 48 hours to update. You can NOW login to the server, but your domain will most likely take a little while to be live.

Me: After all that, DNS has a surprisingly familiar ring to it. Comforting, even.

Again, welcome aboard, don’t be afraid to ask any questions
-The LISHost team
LISHost.org

Me: Heheheheh… “don’t be afraid to ask questions” … they’ll rue the day…

So yeah, I procrastinated for a while by making all my lunches for the week, and chatting with a couple of friends, and writing most of this blog post. And then I sat down to the task of changing my password (the least I should do before publishing a blog post saying that I probably have a password sitting there, all hack-enticing, in my email). An hour later, I’ve finally conquered the password-changing task and have given myself the rest of the night off. I think this warm glow of victory will be nicely complemented by chocolate ice cream.

I sincerely hope there’s a more graphical way to navigate other basic tasks. I am not an SSH lover, and suddenly all those directory addresses that Blake told me about feel a lot less friendly than they did at first read. After all, what does a directory even LOOK like without windows and files and folders and things?? (On the other hand, maybe this is good for me. After all, I said I wanted to learn how this stuff works, right? RIGHT??)

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I know it’s not technically midsummer. We passed that a while back. But here at work, it’s the middle of our institution’s summer. Whole weeks can pass with only one or two meetings scheduled. Whole days can pass without any student asking me anything (we don’t have summer sessions for our students, though we do have summer programs for other people’s students). Whole hours can pass while I concentrate on one project without interruption. Everything feels different.

One thing I’ve enjoyed about this summer at the library is that the various research assistants on campus seem to have decided to congregate every day and work side-by-side in the main computer area of the reference room. Each student works on his or her assigned projects, chatting occasionally with whomever is sitting at the next computer, and generally keeping each other company through the long hours of research. This may have happened in previous years, but I don’t remember it, and it warms my heart every time I see the group hard at work together.

People always ask me what I do all summer without students, and I rarely have a good answer. In fact, I usually just pick whichever project I’m working on at the moment and say, “well, right now I’m working on [whatever it is]” and hope they don’t say “but that won’t take all summer, will it?” Because it won’t. There are a million other projects to do, but very little that can be synthesized down to “in the summer I work on this kind of thing and that kind of thing” conversation snippet. For some reason, it’s rarely seems to be enough to say, like those students can say, that my colleagues and I gather every day to work in proximity on the various projects that can’t happen during the school year’s crush of interruptions, classes, consultations, and meetings.

So what am I working on during this week in the middle of our summer? Well, I need to get acquainted with our (brand new to us) instance of LibGuides (which we’ve been wanting for years and finally have). I’m putting together my piece of a presentation on learning-centric library instruction for a professional development day that’s coming up in a couple of weeks at Gustavus Adolphus. I’m figuring out what needs to change in EndNote to bring the MLA style up to date now that we have our 7th edition copies in hand (and I need to figure out how to handle their pesky restrictions surrounding the online version). I’m also trying to re-start the effort to make Metalib work the way we need it to work. And I’m drafting a proposal to assess our Research/IT service point.

Sometime soon (once I’ve figured out LibGuides) I need to embark on my summer schedule of updating all my departmental research guides. (This is when being the librarian for 10 departments becomes time consuming in the summer.) Then there are a couple of complicated course-specific guides I should start working on. I have some Moodle/eReserves documentation to overhaul, some instructional material to create and some projects to assess in my capacity as a member of the campus’ copyright committee, and some planning to do for a new project in which I will coordinate a continual environmental scan for our library.

At least, those are the bigger projects that I hope I’ll get to before the most active prepare-for-fall-term portion of summer arrives. I hope my brain and work life cooperate to make that possible.

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