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The death of peer review

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Not Making Software Un-Social If the peer-review process isn’t working well, how do we fix it?

1. Start a professional conversation among concerned colleagues.

2. Publish articles in formal and informal forums.

3. Publish an entire issue of a peer-reviewed journal — the Journal of Access Services — where the sole contributor is the Annoyed Librarian.

The third answer is the correct one, however bizarre it sounds. But it gets better than that, because even though this stunt had plenty of coverage, it turns out that the journal’s editors weren’t in on the joke.

I am not going to dwell ad infinitum on the Annoyed Librarian. As others have observed, he or she (I’m not convinced AL is female) is obviously a well-placed librarian with a lot of pull — enough to bedazzle magazine owners, especially in financially desperate times. She or he has the gift of the gab, and good connections. Plus AL dwells in the dark side, a place that tempts with the glitter of obsidian.

The best we can all do in life is shed the things that give us grief and focus on our own excellence and the excellence of those around us. I have a lot of things on my mind: how to get everything done at work, the full set of memories I haven’t processed from Australia,  the economy, my writing workshop,  Obama’s administration picks, my Thanksgiving menu (which is trending toward oyster stew and pumpkin creme brulee, accompanied by a lovely bottle of wine Doug from CCLA gave me as a going-away gift). I will keep on track, even if the Library Bill of Rights itself gets replaced with the giggling screeds of AL.

I have even pushed away the knowledge that there is a library professor (should I tell you who it is? w)ho has told crowds of people that I am AL. The AL truly is a devil with an MLS.

The one thing that haunts me about Annoyed Librarian is my worry that when we find out who it is, the knowledge will cut like a knife.

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Jet lag? Me? And an event not to miss

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

I was told this was the “hard” direction — coming back to the U.S. from Australia. It hasn’t been too rough — though I wake up feeling as if I’ve been nailed to the bed — which makes me wonder if I ever really switched over. We jostled our way across so many time zones I think my body plumb gave up trying to adjust.100_4533

(Do astronauts get jet lag?)

No srsly, not to be missed!

The big thing I want to share is that this Friday, November 21,  there will be yet another one-hour online ALA Connections Salon. This one is hot as a pistol: it’s “Political Connections,” featuring the charming and well-spoken Emily Sheketoff, associate executive director of ALA’s Washington Office, and Vic Klatt, ALA’s political consultant and former staff director of the House Education and Labor Committee.

It’s online, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. EST Friday, Nov. 21, 2008. Come one, come all!

From the blurb:

“Online Programming for All Libraries (OPAL) Coordinator Tom Peters will begin the hour with an interview with Sheketoff and Klatt. Both professionals will talk about President-Elect Obama’s Administration, the new Congress and what these changes in Washington portend for libraries during a period—a year, a term and beyond—marked by extraordinary challenges.

“Following the interview, participants will be free to ask questions and engage with Sheketoff, Klatt and with one another to discuss the promise and perils of a moment when, as President-Elect Obama said in his victory speech, “there’s so much more to do.”

If you’re a first-time user of OPAL, here’s a webpage containing basic information and tips.

But for now, I’m up very early tomorrow for a meeting in Warner Robins (4 hours north), so I’m taking it very easy and old-ladyish tonight, doing a little work blogging and uploading hundreds of photos to both my personal and work accounts while soup simmers on the stove.

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If it’s Sunday, it must be Melbourne

Saturday, November 15, 2008

I’m speed-blogging at a net kiosk at the Melbourne airport. The woman behind me in line at the coffee stand giggled at my ziplock bag of Australian change. “We need change purses, love,” she said, and I saw she was holding a paper napkin filled with coins. We truly are all alike in our differences.

This has been a remarkable time to be abroad. When I lived overseas in the military — in the 1980s, in England, Germany, and Korea — I became accustomed to a global perspective that you find in many countries. We need that perspective in our own country — that sense of being part of something larger than “We’re Number One.”

It’s not that each country shouldn’t have pride; when someone in Queensland suggested the United States should brag less about its accomplishments, I replied that few countries adopt as their motto, “We’re Not the Best.” But for close to a decade our presence in the world has been increasingly defined by a bellicose, over-entitled persona that should make us all wince.

We have been seen as a violent, aggressive, boorish country using more than its fair share of resources and chronically unwilling to play well with others, and based on global events, it is hard to argue otherwise. Even if many of us individually are good people — and my experience living worldwide is that most people on this planet wish one another well, have a good sense of humor about life’s inconveniences, and loathe airplane food — our performance in the ad hoc global legislature has been problematic at best, and deeply damaging at worst.

After the elections, a friend forwarded the satirical article from the Onion (I point out that it *is* satirical on behalf of my international friends) about a black man being given the worst job in the United States — a cleaning job, at that. I think everyone understands the work ahead for all of us.  As I shared with more than one cab driver worried about the job Obama confronts (and every cab driver had an opinion), it’s like weight gain: it takes a while to pack on all those pounds, and it takes even longer to shed them.  

More later after a long pond-hop.

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Powder featured on NPR

Sunday, November 9, 2008

As Miriam B. noted in a comment, “No doubt you are hearing this from your fellow writers: RIGHT NOW, _Powder_ is being featured in a 5-minute segment on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday. Whoo-hoo!!! http://tinyurl.com/6g7w9t”

I’m very psyched. My  own contribution to this volume was in the lighter zone, as this review demonstrates. I do have deep, serious, reflective pieces… some written and some not… but this was a humorous essay about the positive aspects of military service, and they are legion.

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From Brisbane to Perth

Saturday, November 8, 2008

This morning I’m squeezing in one last stroll around Brisbane before we fly to Perth — a five-hour flight that crosses (I believe) two time zones.

Our talks are going well, but Saturday was time off (though I did get up early Brisbane time and do some “day job” stuff — this is a long time to be away from The Office, and life doesn’t stop just because I’m in Oz).

So Lizanne and I took a deliciously long, slow ferry to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, reading along the way (so nice to travel with another librarian), posed for pictures (we were allowed to take our own pix once we bought a picture from the sanctuary, which seemed fair enough), fed kangaroos, tried to see a wallabee (he was not receiving visitors), and then came back to downtown Brisbane to potter around and have a quiet Indian meal.

I should add I had been warned that koalas are cranky and prone to peeing on people. This koala — I believe his name is “Spanks” — was quite docile and seemed to enjoy his day job. He has been posing with visitors for four years now.

The previous night David Shaun Feighan squired us to Il Centro, which is known for its sandcrab lasagna. David shared a bite of his, but (mindful that calories do count even across this many time zones) I went for a lovely avocado-sandcrab salad that when I took a bite transported me to an identical moment a year in the past, at Passionfish in Pacific Grove (thanks, Walter!).

Both versions were delightful — avocado and crab are sweetly complementary, and it’s a cool-as-a-cucumber dish that cuts through muggy warm nights — though Il Centro added a thin ring of tomato puree which didn’t add to the dish at all and which I scraped away.

It is uncanny how much sandcrabs taste like my beloved Dungeness — even the texture is identical, firm and flaky without a touch of mealiness — and it was also one of those moments when I realized I had flown halfway round the world and yet was still on the Pacific Ocean, my departure point from the continental U.S.

To return to the real issue — the food — the major difference between the versions by Passionfish and Il Centro was the avocado, which at Il Centro was smooth as buttercream and gossamer on the tongue.

Do I prefer the unctuous, street-fightin’ heft of a California Hass or the more angelic quality of an Australian avocado? It would be nice if life’s problems were never harder than that.

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Powder: The YouTube Trailer

Friday, November 7, 2008

Update: YouTube is being funky, so try this link (thanks for the tip!)

November 11, Veterans’ Day, is the release date for Powder, an anthology from Kore Press in which one of my essays, “Falling In,” is not so coincidentally included. Here’s a trailer featuring some of the authors for Powder reading from their work — nice job!

Thanks also to the 44 libraries that show WorldCat holdings for The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 2. (Now off I go to visit the koalas!)

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Prop 8, Prop 2, and The PhD Tell-all Post

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Dateline: Brisbane, Australia

So the downside of the election is that voters in California, Arizona, and Florida trounced gay-marriage rights. Sandy and I have received very sympathetic mail from friends. I am still turning it over in my head. I gave my first talk yesterday and to my relief it went well (Lizanne was terrific), so my brain is no longer singularly locked onto the idea that I’ll get up in front of people from another country and make a complete fool of myself.

I have an essay, “The Outlaw Bride,” coming out in the next issue of Ninth Letter. This essay is about our experience in 2004 — being able to marry, and then having our marriage invalidated. I just saw the proofs a week or two ago, and they are beautiful — literally beautiful, laid out on what looks like wedding stationery.  I was hoping the essay would be ancient history, but sadly, instead, it is timely response and advocacy.

Meanwhile, in the “where do I begin” category, I received this non sequitur of a comment on an earlier post about the election:

Zeke 72.226.71.192 cpe-72-226-71-192.nycap.res.rr.com

Instead I think you should consider yourself as a chicken with an asterisk concerning the lack of candor (aka lying) on your resume. When will you admit what you were doing at the University of Michigan. Is it really all that embarrassing to flub a PHD? Free range what?

I don’t know Zeke, assuming this person exists, but this puzzles me, as I have been quite direct with anyone who needs or even wants to know that I successfully completed one semester at UM in 1995 and then dropped out.  Who is this person, dragging around all this misplaced righteous indignation? (We could say “apparently a Roadrunner user in New York,” though even that could be misleading.)

Yet “Zeke’s comment,” small and angry though it is, rocketed me back to a tough time that turned out all right in the end — one I am asked about now and then. Since it is part of my pre-blogging history, here goes.

(Needless to say, as with my other blog posts, you’re still only getting part of the story.)

The academics were not the hard part. In fact, this will sound all wrong (all “tall poppy,” to be Australian about it), but the academics weren’t even hard — they felt like just more graduate-level library work. (I’m sure I would have hit a tough class later on. However, I have met enough low-voltage PhD students to think my assessment is largely on target.)

UM was just the wrong place, wrong time, wrong PhD topic, and a few more “wrongs.”  Sandy and I were apart (the plan was she would join me later), my elderly cat was dying, a family member was seriously ill, and I rented a room from a woman who turned out to be a distracting wack jobby whose hooting voice and shrill giggle regularly woke me up in the wee hours.

I was alone and miserable and suddenly realized I had no idea why I wanted a PhD.

I walked away from a fellowship, and later, at SUNY Albany (where I also taught as an adjunct), I took Tom Galvin’s advice and didn’t formally pursue a PhD in that program. Sandy and I weren’t sure how long we would be in Albany, and Tom said I could afford to drop out of a PhD program once — just not twice.

Just Because I Could, I took information technology policy from Tom. Add info policy to the list of classes that should be required for library students. Add taking a class from Tom (RIP) as something not to be missed — he took a potentially deadly topic and made it edge-of-the-seat important and fascinating.

I inevitably provide my UM transcript to my employers even if it’s not required, as my performance speaks for itself.  I’m just another PhD dropout, but I did all right (and ACM published one paper I wrote during the program).

On the fatal topic — freenets and community networks — as soon as I closely examined what then appeared to be a hot topic, I realized freenets would be largely extinct very soon, and that the topic was at best ancillary.

I might have stayed in UM’s program if I had been better-equipped to ask for and make the changes I needed. But then I surely would never have gone back for an MFA in writing, which was the academic experience of my life — scary, boundary-pushing, crazy-making, wonderful.

I’ve off-and-on pondered LIS PhD-ville, but there are faster and less expensive ways to retool, if retooling is in order. For one crazy scheme I have in mind, I’ve pondered a CAS in digital libraries, to better equip myself, but again — I’d want to be sure I was leaping onto the right streetcar (and at the moment, I don’t have the fare).

In a twist tying all of this together, our decision to hit the undo button on Michigan was a defining moment in our life together, one I mention in “The Outlaw Bride” — a moment that says, regardless what the state thinks, Sandy and I are nonetheless married.

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The Whole World was Watching

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Don’t get me wrong, when it became obvious Obama was winning big, it was fun to be at the Democrats Abroad party at the Slide Nightclub in Darlinghurst, Sydney, waving my pint and shouting as the results came in. It was all the sweeter because it was clear  this was no ordinary victory. To borrow an expression, “we beat them like rented mules.”

But the full significance of this election to the world at large swept over me an hour later, in an ordinary pub where a woman with a chihuahua snuggled in her arms sat outside sunning herself, men in the back played video games, and workmen struggled to install one more table near the door.

Lizanne and I had thought it was too early for McCain to concede, and were sprawled on a couch talking about the events of the day, when a screen-scroll announced that regular programming was preempted.

As Obama strode onto the stage, we stood up. This was for practical reasons — we couldn’t see the screen from where we sat — and yet it somehow felt right for other reasons. We were honoring something much larger than a new president.

The workmen put down their tools.
The bartender stopped wiping glasses.
The woman with the chihuahua walked in and stood with us.
The men in the back left their video games and came forward.
People drifted in off the street and stood quietly, eyes fixed on the screen.

No one sat. Everyone stood for Obama.

As Obama spoke, the pub was pregnant with respectful silence. I wanted to take a picture but my hands were wet from wiping away tears.

Obama finished his speech; then everyone in the pub — all but two of us Australians — cheered and applauded.

Life picked up where it left off. The television resumed its mindless daytime chatter, and soon the workmen were making a tremendous racket. The video-game players wandered to fresher territory. The woman with the chihuahua reestablished her post at the prime outdoor spot in front of the pub, her nervous little dog still tucked in her arms. Everyone else either got a beer and sat down, or stepped back into the sunshine of a Sydney spring day to resume their quotidian tasks.

But I felt, at long last, no longer an American with an asterisk, apologizing for a government at odds with the world.

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Free Range Beer, Powerpoint, Writing, and Suitcases

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

My suitcase arrived! Oh the joy of My Things. I’m still feeling vindicated that I dragged all of my presentation stuff on the plane, plus cords, adapters, etc.

Lizanne Payne pointed out this sign while we were headed to the Sydney Harbour. If you click through on the picture you’ll see more from our trip yesterday. She is a great travel partner — we are very compatible in terms of how long our legs hold out and what we find fun.

Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan has a worthy article in the Atlantic this month about the value of writing long form versus blogging. He was talking about writing from an “output” perspective, but I also believe that writing as a mental discipline (and to some extent the thinking I am doing with my presentation) .

I had this sudden moment of clarity with my talk yesterday where I realized that I was trying to wedge in too many issues and also that there was a thematic arc I had overlooked. Finding this arc was a result of the iterative writing process that remaps my brain so it is no longer thinking line by line, but is able to synthesize and see the overarching themes and metaphors in a work.

Now back to 4 hours of PowerPoint (remapping my brain as I go) and then lunch with Fiona Bradley, who works in a library across the street from this hotel, before Lizanne and I repair to the Slide Nightclub to watch the returns.

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Qantas: please deliver my luggage!

Monday, November 3, 2008

Update: the Qantas lady immediately credited me $100 (Australian) which will at least keep me in shirts, socks, and undies.  I felt she was on my side and listening. They aren’t really sure what plane the bag will be on and we had a talk about my plans for Thursday that I hope was very, very hypothetical. (Visions of my suitcase, one step behind me for 16 days…) She even sounded genuinely glad to get my temporary “mobile.”

If I give my first talk in my jeans, just remember: Equinox really does take care of me… I just am having trouble finding clothes my size at the last minute. (Our lovely hosts checked in with me today and asked what they could do, and I said “If it gets down to the wire, if you have a sewing machine…”)

———————————

I’m in very deep “WTF” territory at the moment. I called Qantas baggage services at Sydney only to find my suitcase, sitting at LAX, didn’t make it on the plane to Sydney last night.

Reasons given?

1. Too much weight on the plane.

2. Priority goes to passengers on the flight and their luggage.

3. It’s actually Delta’s fault because they mishandled the bag Sunday night at LAX.

It was clear from the conversation that I was supposed to not even notice that the Qantas rep said “Wednesday” and not “Tuesday.” “Whoa,” said I, in a sudden fluster. “That’s right,” the clerk said smoothly, “Wednesday…”

So let me get this right. If I showed up with two heavy suitcases for last night’s LAX-SYD flight (was that actually the only flight after 108 Sunday night?), would they make me leave one behind? I’m guessing the answer would be no–they’d take my money for extra baggage and check it. But they didn’t have room for one 34-pound suitcase? Who was on this flight — Sumo wrestlers?

Note also the act of omission. Even if it were all about weight on the plane, whatever happened to contacting the customer to let her know — the customer who carefully provided email, address, and hotel phone? “The national Pet Rock Society just checked in their bags, and we’re above weight, and we’re so sorry, and we’ll make it up to you somehow…”

Because they clearly knew yesterday that the bag didn’t make it, and they must also know hotel desks are staffed 24 hours.

I can be smarmed very easily. Even if they technically owe me more compensation, at that point I’m all about being notified and coddled — I am a very cheap date at that point. Not so when I have to call them to be told what they already know.

Admit it: the back offices at LAX are filled with Qantas personnel trying on my clothes, drinking my coffee, using my face lotion, and applying my Estee Lauder foundation, which I’ll have you know, did not come cheaply and without which I feel a bit naked.

As for finding clothes my size in this town, I think I shall wear hotel towels cunningly pinned in a toga-esque fashion, with my feet clad in herring boxes without topses. After all, if it worked for Clementine, it can work for me.  Unless, of course, I can get some compensation from Qantas which at this point I feel is quite reasonable to ask.

I would be on the phone with Qantas customer service (at this point, it will be about compensation)  but they don’t open until 9 a.m. The rep said I could send Qantas an email — but if they’re having trouble phoning their customers, I don’t think changing formats will improve matters.

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