675 - Unit 1

The collection of objects that I would like to discuss and which I think may be of interest of others with a shared fascination of history are objects related to the Sutro area in San Francisco. My collection will consist of some photographs and possibly a few drawings and films. This site is located in an area known as Lands End on the western coastal side of San Francisco. The land is federally protected, but it used to have a large glass bathhouse that was built in 1894. The bathhouse burned down in 1966, but luckily instead of being developed as was the original plan, the federal government became the custodian of the land so that the ruins of the baths remain. I have long held a fascination for this site and have taken several photographs over the years. While none of the glass remains, the foundation and pools are still there, and is one is brave enough you can walk around the periphery of the large dark green pools.

People interested in ruins, San Francisco history, naturalists, etc, may find these objects of interest (hopefully!). My master's thesis was about the ruins of a 1923 movie set in the Guadalupe dunes on the central coast of California, so I've continued my fascination for these unique environments by trying to capture images of the Sutro Baths. I think some of the terms that could be used might include Adolf Sutro, Lands End, Cliff House (another institution created by Adolf Sutro, and still in business after more than 100 years), San Francisco & ruins. I might also include some postcards of the original baths that I have collected, as I think this will make for a more varied taxonomy.

Unit 12 - the end...

Plan and do from PMBOK guide reiterated what I’ve learned in 673 on project management. Timelines are essential, as are the lines of communication. This was emphasized by the first reading, Cervone’s project risk management. I think this is one of the best reasons to have a CMS for managing projects within the organization. Within a CMS you can track all the projects with which you are involved. The leader of an organization should be able to go into a CMS and view the various stages of projects within programs throughout the organization. Our University Librarian does this with our CMS – if one is viewing it a certain way then one can gain something of a snapshot of programs and projects going on throughout the organization.

Cervone contends that when making a decision two forces are at play - the courage to make a decision along with a sense of caution about the consequences. I couldn't agree more with this summation. You have to be brave as a decision maker, but you also have to be frugal and conservative to some extent; you have to consider how that decision will affect others and the organizational workflows, but at the same time if you want to nurture a creative and dynamic organization then you need to be able to make decisions that will help the organization grow and flourish.

I also appreciate Cervone's point that if you wait too long to complete a project that it may turn into a totally different project. I think this idea ties in nicely with Unit 8 and how we explored the difference between long-term strategic planning and the shorter timelines inherent in technology plans. With our rapidly changing technological landscape it seems wise at every juncture to ask "why are we doing this?" Modifying a plan as it progresses is an important part of change management, as is insuring that the project is executed in a timely and organized manner.

Unit 11 & looking back

I honestly wish I hadn’t struggled so much with FTP during this past unit so that I could concentrate more on the structure of PHP. I did do the standard lamp installation quite a while ago in unit 7, but I still wasn’t seeing the /var/www directory in fugu. Thus I typed everything out in the command line using sudo nano (this was actually quite fun, as the tags light up in the command line – they do in text edit/dreamweaver as well, but it’s not quite the same as in the command line you’re seeing it against a dark background – it was the only light I could see, so to speak, in my very gloomy confusion. But this is how we learn, right?

For the most part I feel pretty good about what I’ve learned, but I know it’s just the tip of the iceberg. I don’t feel as though I can comprehensively articulate everything I’ve learned because it’s all yet swirling around me like a sea of numbers & words. I think there are many people in the class who are able to pick up this information much more quickly, so I’ve felt somewhat less skilled than in my previous two digin courses. With my 50-hour work weeks I’ve found the course load a bit daunting, but that’s the feeling I expect from a graduate program too – it’s not supposed to be easy.

I do agree with prof. Fulton that we should consider picking up certain programming languages, if even just one or two, in order to become proficient. Personally I really liked learning XML and Mysql: XML because of its flexibility and omnipresence in the current work of digital curation, and Mysql because I particularly enjoy its regular expressions and Boolean operators. It also goes hand in hand with this week’s PHP exercises.

I’m looking forward to immersing myself in my final project paper and wrapping up the course over the next 7 days (thank goodness for some furlough time this week!), and I must say that I will miss the rigor that this course has provided – I also appreciate that prof. Fulton has been so available to the class, emailing back seemingly 24/7 when students are struggling with the activities. Anyways, I think it’s time to end my blog as I just did a control + c on a word doc as I would on the VM! Time to go to sleep.

Unit 10 Tables are Zen

It took a while for me to realize that right and left joins are more about the output of the data rather than some 'floating' table that happens to be right instead of left. I have to admit that most of what we’ve been learning has been challenging, but I’ve really enjoyed the hands-on exercises from this week’s unit. I also like that mysql is a language comprised of statements and Boolean expressions, and how you can break up a statement by clicking enter. Sometimes I am premature in pressing enter, and with mysql it is nice to know that by pressing enter I’m not activating a command but just breaking it up. The semi-colon is like the period at an end of a paragraph (it feels that way too, as the inner joins pack a lot of instructions into one statement).

Conceptually I think that learning about tables & mysql is easier to understand than some of the information in earlier units because of the ability to easily visualize the concepts. With the unit on Networked environments, for example, I felt that I had to have a lot of the concepts spelled out for me in order to understand, whereas with tables I think that I’m so used to functioning in a work environment comprised of information in tables that these concepts were much easier to grasp.

Thinking of different queries to run during this week’s query exercise was a challenge but also a lot of fun. Especially when the joins differed from those in the assignments (and especially when the queries worked!). I think I’m coming closer to understanding the difference between a primary key and integer, or in the language of mysql, an int unsigned not null auto_increment vs. an int not null.

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.