Make Salad, Not War

Luke, my 8-year-old, and I alternate nights with my 5-year-old for snuggles before falling asleep. On Luke's nights, he likes to stay awake as long as possible chatting about whatever he can come up with. Sometimes I am dead tired and there is my wide-eyed little Luke all excited for Mommy snuggles and as soon as I lay down he'll start in with, "so, what should we talk about?" I wonder whether I am going to have one of those closeted teenagers or whether he will always be this adorable eager beaver?

Several nights ago it was Luke's turn for Mommy snuggles. I lay down beside him and slid my arm around him.

"Mommy," he said, "did you know that the Stormtroopers in my Lego Star Wars game have guns that turn into carrots?! Isn't that crazy?!"

"Carrots?" I said, "That sure is crazy!"

"They can't hurt anyone Mommy! They're just -- carrots!" he said.

"Wow," I said, "What if that could really happen and we could replace all of the guns in the world with carrots?"

"Yeah!" he said excitedly.

"And bombs could be tomatoes," I said.

"Yeah, it's like salad!" he said even more excited.

"Yeah Luke! Make salad, not war!" I said

And with that the two of us fell into a fit of giggles. Luke decided that he was going to start a major campaign to replace weapons with vegetables and encourage world peace by making salad, not war. Politics with an 8-year-old is so much fun!

The Semester is Over and I've Survived!

Little did I know a year ago that I'd be sitting at my computer having completed my first semester of graduate school on my way to a whole new career. It's amazing how life can change in a year. I'm so thankful for the amazing gifts that life has thrown my way in friendship and family. As much as I've seen around the globe, it's the amazing relationships I've found with people that have shown me that no matter how much craziness, darkness, and brutality we all may hear about there is far more light and love to be found.

My mother came to me last spring and offered to pay for my education at a time when I saw no opportunity. I have an incredible mother. I delight in every day that I've been able to raise my own children as I hold onto their giggles and snuggles and watch them sprout up before my very eyes. When I jokingly say, "My! You are almost ready for college!" My 5-year-old daughter wells up and says she will never want to leave me and my 8-year-old son proudly proclaims that he is taking "mommy, baby beluga, sleepy bear, and RS Media" (his robot) with him. I chuckle knowing the reality that they will be oh-so independent in a very short while, but know that I am truly blessed. I am thankful for the friends, both old and new. The friends I have known since I was 7, 17, 32, and just a year or two ago. Friends who have made life rich with laughter and compassion as we've shared our growing, our greatest joys, our greatest sorrows and sometimes just a good glass of merlot.

So as 2008 comes to an end, I hope that all are able to look for the light and love, the joy and laughter in your lives and welcome in a bright 2009. Peace.

muddiest point

Cloud computing and Web 2.0 are a great development, but don't they pose a security risk for sensitive data? How do you ensure that protection is adequate if you are relying on software and hardware outside of your local network?

Muddiest Point -- Wikipedia

How exactly does one get picked to become a part of the volunteer hierarchy at Wikipedia?

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Readings Week 12 -- Social Software

This week's readings were about blogs and wikis. Until I started in the MLIS program, I'd read a few blogs here and there and certainly looked up a few things on Wikipedia, but really hadn't used wiki's all that much. During the past few months, however, I've gained a whole new perspective and appreciation for them. What they really bring to the table is a new way to connect and collaborate.

Blogs allow us to carry on a web-based discussion, be it a scientific or engineering-based discussion as the Reichert article talks about, or a discussion among student from different classrooms in different parts of the world. They open up new possibilities for how teachers can teach or politicians can carry on political debates. I've been quite intrigued by the whole thing and am sure that as a school librarian I'll be using blogs and encouraging teachers within my school to use them as well.

Wikis bring a new face to collaboration. Once skeptical of the validity of Wikipedia, my viewpoint has shifted. I am beginning to look at Wikipedia as a source with as much validity as an other encyclopedia. After reading about the creation of the OED and learning about the process of creating Wikipedia and the standards to which it is being upheld, it seems to be a valid resource. In using wikis for writing collaboratively, I am finding them to be incredibly useful. They force compromise as a group moves toward a finished document. I wonder what an experiment would be like if we took a section of US Copyright Law and put it on the web as a wiki for a year for all to tinker with? Would something reasonable come out or would it be an utter failure? Maybe Lawrence Lessig should give it a try just to see what happens...

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Muddiest Point -- OAI

Can you spend some more time on OAI? It seemed like you flew through this part of the lecture at the end and I have too many questions to list...

Readings Week 11 -- Digital Libraries and Institutional Repositories

This was quite an interesting topic to read about this week as it has been something that I have been delving into at work for the past 6-8 weeks as a side project. I work part-time at the University of Delaware as the newsletter editor/writer for the Center for Composite Materials. I'm interested in moving the web page in the direction of a DL so that our researchers work gains wider access. Some of it is already online, but it is often outdated and not well organized. We do have a small archive of old material on DSpace, but are not leveraging properly. I'm trying to learn as much as I can so that I can pull together a team to organize a project that will revamp what we currently have. To that end, all three of these readings were helpful, but the Lynch article was extremely interesting. One of the issues I am struggling with is the copyright issue and what we are allowed to publish. The MIT model is amazing, but won't work for CCM as we are part commercial. I'd like to see more models of open access archives and how institutions are setting them up.

Webpage

I have not been able to get FileZilla to work on my Mac, so after several tries, I am giving up. I have plenty of space to host my website on my Mac site as well as Comcast, so hopefully that is OK.

http://web.mac.com/melissajosef/iWeb/Site%202/Welcome.html