Unit 9 and I feel fine:)

Some of the SQL tutorials became a little difficult for me once we moved on to the later sections, but everything before that point was relatively straightforward, especially after having done the tutorial in the content section. I really enjoyed listening to Mostafa, but at one point when he moved to integers, I admit that I started to feel lost.

I’m still struggling a bit with relationships between entities and normalization, although the more examples I look at and think about the concepts, the more “ah ha!” moments I have. I’m really looking forward to using Mysql, and exporting a table as a text file. I’m also looking forward to working on our final project for this class. I think that one of the most humbling challenges has been the quizzes, as I usually don’t fare as well as I would like. Although I swear I will go through each and every one again, trying to obtain the highest score, before the final exam.

Overall this unit has been very informative; as I’ve worked with several databases throughout the years, it’s very interesting to think about conceptualizing a database from scratch, the types of queries you will need to run, and defining the separate entities and attributes along with the unique identifier primary key.

Technology planning

One of the readings from this week's unit that I could most identify with was Stephens’ Technoplans vs. technolust, as I see quite a few people around me enamored with technolust, although I don’t think this is a bad thing so long as it helps the library users, the users being the overriding concern of any technology plan. I also liked Stephens’ point that technology plans are often implemented without full regard as to how the affect the front lines. As a middle manager this is part of my job, to be the buffer between the technology and other implementations from the top and the front-line staff. Procedures and workflows help considerably, but it’s also important to make sure that you’re not overloading your staff.


I really enjoyed Schuyler’s article “Life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans.” I see this all the time with our library technology group. They are constantly dealing with small but time consuming issues that are not written into the technology plans, such as a cyberattack on self check hard drives, viruses in the digital signage software, new printers needing to be configured, etc. I’ve also noticed how our primary technology services coordinator quickly moved up the command chain in the last 3 years, and deservedly so given the responsibilities of his job and the greater part that technology plays not only in the work of staff but in the day-to-day needs of our users.

Introduction to XML

I worked through the entire “basic” section of the W3Schools web tutorials. I thought the tutorials and examples were very clear. I would still like to go through the UACBT tutorials, as I really enjoy these and I like the narrator’s clear and informal presentation. However working 50 + hours a week I’m having a difficult time making it through every single reading, and I thought the W3Schools tutorial very clear. I like the straightforward examples directly under each point made throughout the tutorials, and thought the tutorial made the differences between elements and attributes very clear. I love the fact that XML tags, which are not predefined, allow for a great deal of flexibility. Although with this flexibility is the issue of standardization of metadata.

My XML document included some photographs from my trip to Washington D.C. last week. I linked my photographs according to Professor Fulton’s instructions in one of this week’s activity responses. I didn’t see any errors when opening my XML document with a browser (after some troubleshooting the first time around), so hopefully all went well. I added CSS at the top, but I didn’t see any difference in the form of the document, so hopefully this is something we will go into greater detail later on.

I don't have an MLIS, and my primary jobs at the library are in library services and exhibits, so I'm really trying to absorb the sections on Metadata, especially MARC, Dublin core, MODS & METS, and I'm looking forward to learning more about how XML create interoperability and flexibility across different metadata schemes.

Unit 6 from D.C.

This posting is short and sweet as I'm out of town and haven't been able to complete the router assignments due to being away from my home router. However, I've been doing my homework in between sessions here at ALA.

The html & css tutorials were very helpful, and although I’ve worked minimally with actually writing html, I’m used to looking at the screens and the language via Dreamweaver and our library's CMS which is powered by Joomla. CSS however had always been a mystery to me, so I’m really excited to have learned how to set a background color or font for every webpage that I may create.

I’m looking forward to learning more about scripts, as scripts seem to be key to interoperability between systems, although as of yet I’m not sure to what extent this is true; I know that scripts control the different softwares being used.

Unit 5 & the Network Train

There seems to be so much reading required for this class, and everything that we read is crucial to understanding the concepts – sometimes the detail is so technical I find that I have to reread a section 2 or more times before it sinks in. It feels that in part by osmosis and repetition that I’m coming to understand how everything works together. This week’s unit on networking has been one of most interesting thus far, although honestly binary numbers are still throwing me for a local loop (joke). A long train ride up to Oakland allowed me to plow through the Nemeth reading, although again, it’s when I get to the binary numbers and IP addresses that I feel a bit lost.

I guess as far as learning types I fall into the visual learner category, although I think there must be a tinge of verbal learning style in the mix. The videos in this week’s readings were great, especially the interview with Metcalfe discussing the creation of Ethernet and the video on sending data packets across the LAN and internet – this latter selection kind of reminded me of space mountain.

Adding groups & users: grover, ernie & bert

I thought the installation of webmin to be pretty straightforward. At first when I found the ip address using ifconfig, I didn’t realize that the 10000 had to be added onto the end, but once I typed in correctly all went well.

We were supposed to create 3 users and 3 groups (user name in each instance corresponded to a group of the same name). I chose names that were easy to remember, preferring to go with a sesame street theme so that now I have 3 new users & groups: grover, ernie & bert.

I was a little alarmed when I first saw the message “grover is not in sudoers file. This incident will be reported” but as I looked more closely at the instructions I realized this is the message that I should see since I had not added the admin group in the useradd command line. Although I'm still wondering to who/what grover's incident will be reported?

Adding a user & group through the remote desktop did not seem to go as well as the Webmin or VM processes, as testing files with the sudo nano testfile command in the terminal utility took me to the GNU nano testfile, and from here none of my commands seemed to work. Eventually I just had to restart in order to escape. Overall I found the remote desktop a little cagey and slow, although the GUI utility for adding groups & users was easy to navigate. Ultimately I think that I'm slowly coming around to appreciating the CLI for all its transparency, and the more I type in the black screen (on the VM), the easier it seems to read through the lines of text...

More command line fun

I found the vi tutorial to take much longer than described in the assignments document. I’m not complaining though – thus far I feel this tutorial has been the most helpful in the hands-on exercises, and think this is in part because of the background I’ve been gaining in the readings, writing down and executing commands as well as looking up definitions.

I like going back and forth between insert and command using esc and i. It’s neat to see that the keyboard can have so many uses. I also like the :help command. This is so much better than accessing help in a different window, which has been my usual experience in using GUIs. Here help appears at the top of your window.

The most extensive configuration that I had done before this class was setting up wireless configuration on library users’ laptops and some commands through telnet for our library’s ILS Millennium. I’m used to the computer or the software “telling” me what is necessary (auto updates, automatic configurations, etc). But with the CLI there is an interesting paradox in that while we’re configuring everything by hand, there is at the same time the ability to make more extensive changes with one command than would be possible with the GUI. Not that I’m ready for that yet, but with repetition & memorization I’m hopeful that all the exercises and readings will come together to form a cohesive whole.