YouTube and reverse fame

So I was listening to a Barenaked Ladies live album from a performance from London recorded on 3/30/2007. During the show, one of the band members was talking about an experience he had getting out of a tube (subway) station there. He saw someone he thought he recognized, thought for a minute and then remembered--he had seen him on YouTube singing a cover of "Brian Wilson", one of their songs. He went up to the young man to talk to him and the man did not even recognize him until the band member said who he was.

I think this makes an interesting statement about the age of social computing, where everyone is a publisher thanks to blogs, and everyone can be a rock star thanks to YouTube. Here was a situtation where the "famous" band member recognized the "nobody" before the "nobody" recognized him--and the band member went up to talk to the nobody because of it and then went on to bring it up and speak highly of him during the concert.

Tired of being young...

It has grown old being young. I am probably more sensitive then most others to the issue of the "problem" and "loser" teen for a number of reasons--I'm not that far in age from them, I know so many who still are that age, I've worked with many of these teens, and yet I still feel the discrimination for my age.

As I said in the online chat tonight, I remember not too many years ago when, as a teenager, I would go the library. The attitude, response, level of respect, and overall treatment by the librarians was vastly better when my mother was there than when I chose to go by myself. But yet, I did the same thing no matter who was there with me, I returned books, found books, maybe asked a question or two, and checked out books. When, as a teenager, you are treated with suspicion and like someone who is going to cause trouble the moment you walk in somewhere, most teenagers will follow through.

For two summers while I was in college I was a staff member for an Upward Bound program. Upward Bound is a Dept. of Education program for high schoolers who come from low-income families and are potential first generation college students. Most students brought in a lot of baggage and many problems, but once you got to know them and gave them a chance they were wonderful people. If you didn't give them a chance or were always yelling at them or treating them like convicted juvenile delinquents (like some staff members did), they were terrors. Treat them like humans and find ways to channel their energy, they were great.

As I said above, I'm rather sensitive, maybe even bitter about this issue. I've been working in my college library while I was a student and since I've graduated for a number of years now. Maybe it's my own personal fault, but I have grown rather tired of my co-workers (all middle-aged women) treating my like their child instead of their co-worker. I was hoping that would change when I became a full time staff person there instead of just a work study student, but I was wrong. I still remember the confused and slightly scared look on the face of one of them when I told her than we would be equals when I became a staff member, she wouldn't supervise me anymore (she had, because she supervised the work study students) and that I would report to the library director.

But with all that said, I'm not sure what I can do to change this. Any direct effort I make will just get me labeled as rebellious or a trouble making youth trying to challenge the established leadership of those my elder. That is not my intention at all. I respect the fact they are older and have more experience than me--all I'm asking is that they show me and my generation a little respect in return.

Goodbye Rod Beck and a sliver of childhood

A few days ago saw the passing of Rod Beck and with it a piece of my childhood. I remember watching baseball games on TV that he would pitch in. Enter him in the 9th or maybe the 8th to bail the set up man out of a jam. He would stand hunched over on the mound, glaring in at the catcher and hitter from under the bill of cap and around his long hair and mustache, his right arm swinging back and forth in front of him like a pendulum with a nasty blade attached to the end of it. Once the catcher flashed a sign to his liking he straightened up, kicked his leg and hurled a pitch to the plate just as nasty for the hitter as that pendulum would have been. Then after watching Beck pick up another save, I would go outside with an old baseball glove and a tennis ball. Our neighbor's driveway ran right by our chimney and they were kind enough to allow me to stand on it and "pitch" to our chimney. I would stand hunched over, glaring at the chimney, my arm swinging back and forth in front of me. Then I would straighten up, kick my leg, and hurl that tennis ball at the chimney. I would always save the game--just like Beck.

Several years later, I read a story on the internet on Beck. He had disappeared from the baseball scene for a couple of years to have arm surgery, but wanted to come back. He wanted to come back so bad that he was playing for the Cub's Triple-A team while living out of his trailer in the stadium parking lot. But he wasn't bitter, in fact he was more personable than ever--he was always sharing beer, brats, and stories with any fan who happened to stop by. Reading that story long after I had given up my pro-baseball dreams made me a little sad I had.

In all the web postings about Beck since he passed, this blog seems to sum up my and all die hard baseball fans feelings the best.

Goodbye Rod Beck--Thanks for the memories, the inspirations, and the saves.

Coursecast

I've been watching the Coursecast videos now since the term has begun and every time I watch one I feel as though I'm missing out on large parts of the class. I feel this way because every time a student asks a question or makes a comment I can't hear it. If I'm lucky the camera person will turn up some microphone about halfway through them speaking, but then I spend the next few minutes trying to piece together what they may have said before the microphone was turned up based on what I could hear them say. Sadly this is one of the faults of internet education that I would not have to deal with if I was in an in person program. It would be nice that if the camera operator remember to turn up the microphone halfway through or at all when someone is speaking, if the instructor could repeat the question before answering (sometimes I play Jeopardy, trying to guess the question based on the answer) or summarize the comment from the student. It may be a little repetitive for those physically in the class, but I feel it would go a long way to helping me get a lot more out of the class and actually make me feel like I was a part of the class.

Google Co-OP Link

Here is the link for my custom search engine, the Tropical Fish Keeping Search Engine.

Here is the bloglines URL with the Scopus feed.

MySpace Interview

Here is the video to an interesting interview the BBC did with the founder of MySpace. Read the entire story here.

Cover Finder

Here is an interesting website. It is an index of book covers by color.

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LIS Students and the Academic Library

While I was looking for pages to add to my Connotea/del_icio.us/zotero projects I ran across this blog entry from ACRL. I didn't think it fit in anywhere, but I thought it was too interesting not to share somewhere, especially since I'm sure many others in this program are interested in a career in Academic Libraries, as am I.

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ILL Tour

Here is a cute little presentation put together by MINITEX detailing how their ILL system works.

Journal Prices

Ahhh, the joy of moving. Not only is a great fun packing, hauling, and unpacking, but it also meant that I have limited internet connection time for the better part of a week. Sadly, other parts of my classes took priority over blogging.
Anyway, while among the boxes I began reading The Access Principle by John Willinsky. I have found it a very interesting read. There are many websites that he cites as examples that I am planning on exploring (once I can walk in my bedroom). After reading three chapters, I have one main question which stems from my lack of knowledge about the publishing industry. In the reading, I learned that researchers are not paid for their article submissions to scholarly journals. Why then are the prices for those journal spiraling out of control? It is my hope that Willinsky will address that issue later in the book, because so far the best explanation I can gather from him is capitalist greed by the corporate publishers. I would think there would have to be some deeper reasoning than that (or at least I would hope).