Ponderings on the "American Idea"

I'm taking a course on the role of higher education in a democracy, and class discussion is bringing up interesting thoughts.

I was fascinated by "A Religious Idea Called 'America'" by David Gelernter (Bradley Lecture, Washington, February 13, 2006). Many of the statements the author makes solidify aspects of America that had puzzled me for some time.

The first of these is what the author refers to as "American Zionism." This is a particularly apt metaphor for this feeling that seems to be inherent in many Americans that America is the best country that ever is or was, a chosen country, perhaps even chosen by God. This is something that I never questioned growing up, but became abruptly aware of when I took my first trip abroad after my sophomore year of college. It seems bizarre now, but before then the "outside world" (meaning anyplace outside of America) was simply an abstraction to me. I believed that other countries existed, that people lived in them, but I didn't truly grasp what that meant. When I landed in Italy, suddenly the rest of the world was concretely real to me. I realized that the faceless people I had imagined living in these countries were individuals just like me, who were simply born somewhere else. I realized that there were other worldviews, other contexts from which to understand world events.

And that made me suddenly question America's historic foreign policy of helping (or meddling, depending on your perspective) in other countries' issues. Helping when asked is one thing, but as we all know, America has done more than that--just look to Vietnam or Iraq, to use the obvious examples. I can see why the potential to free a people and give them a democracy is an attractive idea, but is it our business to do so? Why do so many of us seem to think that it is our right, perhaps our divine right, to decide that a country should be governed in a certain way, and to invade and wage war to ensure that this is so?

I find it difficult to define ethics outside of a specific moral code (as is discussed in James Campbell's Understanding John Dewey, chapter 4, the idea of ethics as a secular moral code). I find it difficult to define "right" and "wrong" without a specific code or criteria. I'm sure that some of this difficulty is because I was brought up in a religious home, and my natural pattern of thinking has been defined by a specific moral code. However, regardless of my own beliefs, I believe that America as a country is defined by and exists in large part to protect religious freedom, and as such should be ruled in as secular and nonbiased a manner as possible. It's simply difficult for me to define how that governing should run, what moral code it should adhere to, without having something specific against which to judge that government's actions.

This post doesn't specifically relate to education thus far, but I have had similar intellectual struggles with education in similar manners. How can we teach a variety of worldviews, values, and perspectives in an honest manner to students? Is disclosing our own personal perspective a helpful insight, a cautionary disclosure of our bias, or a harmful influence that creates more bias?

The more I study and think, the fewer answers and more questions I have.

Busy Week...

I'm currently at a conference on civic engagement and deliberative democracy called "No Better Time" at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. It's incredibly cool, and their conference logo this year was made using Wordle! On Saturday, I'll fly directly to Chicago for the rest of ALA Annual (hey, if anyone's free Tuesday morning/early afternoon, want to join me on an architectural boat tour?). Rather than flood my blog with live-blogging sessions, I'm posting notes on my wiki and brief thoughts/greetings/blatherings on my twitter feed.

I return on Tuesday evening and shall immediately collapse.

Mac & iPhone Tidbits

Great quote:
"If we had a dime for every blog rumor about an Apple tablet we've seen, we'd have at least enough for a large soy-based coffee beverage from Starbucks."

-- Dan Ackerman, "Five things still missing from Apple MacBooks" from CNET.com

MacWorld reviews iPhone 3.0.

For iPhone OmniFocus users (and if you have an iPhone without OmniFocus, let me encourage you to check it out--it's the best task-management tool I've ever seen):
"The Coolest Feature You’re Probably Not Using"

-- Brian, The Omni Mouth

Going from 3G to 3GS?
"How to Avoid Paying the iPhone 3GS Upgrade Tax"

-- Brian X. Chen, Wired.com

In Other News...
Rebecca Blakeley has posted some fantastic resources for reading up on Iran and the current conflict, as well as background info.

Research Update

I blogged earlier this semester about three projects I'm researching:

• practices & experiences of academic librarians embedded in online courses
• factors that affect the adoption of electronic reference in academic libraries
  
• ...and a project on educational background of academic library deans (with fellow librarian Annie Downey)

So the status updates on those three are as follows:

• embedded librarians project:
• finishing up the presentation portion of the project (organizing it as 6 case studies, with trends and discussion)
• writing lit review for written portion of project
• since this is for a client (as well as my class), I'm planning to format it as a thick binder with tabs for the lit review/trends, each institutional case study, and will also include a matrix of activities, as well as a summary of commonalities and differences in experiences across the case studies
• electronic reference adoption study:
• this is a paper for a statistics course, so it's a statistical analysis...
• I downloaded the Academic Library Survey datasets from NCES (National Center for Educational Statistics) for 1996 - 2006 (though in the end for various reasons I was only able to use 2000 - 2006; I hope to include the other data this summer)
• reformatting all the data and framing it correctly took quite a while!
• I performed an ANCOVA for a binary response variable using the program "R"
• I did some related analyses, and created graphical displays for each
• I'm now writing the results as an article (it's my first quantitative methods article, and it's proving a bit of a tough writing job for me)
• education of academic library deans study:
  
• Annie's got us a head start on the lit review
• we plan to do the majority of the data gathering this summer
• we're currently working on an abstract to propose to ASHE for this fall

I'm proud of myself for actually taking the time to thoughtfully consider this semester's projects as future publications/presentations. And the more I work on the embedded librarians project, the more I see a future dissertation idea coalescing there... it's pointing in many directions, any of which could prove a fruitful topic. It's pretty exciting to feel that I'm not only researching useful topics, but that the last several semesters combined, I've managed to do at least one project each time on library support for distance learning, which I knew I wanted to pursue broadly all along. Huzzah!

And a brief note, in case I haven't mentioned it here before (I've been tweeting it alot): the task management software OmniFocus (and specifically the iPhone version, although I also have the original program on my Mac) has saved my life this semester. It's tracking my personal errands, house projects, work projects, school research, you name it. It's amazing, and if you have an iPhone it will be the best $19 you've spent.

And thus ends my flagrant advertising. (But seriously, busy techie librarians, try it out!) Or at least consider some form of task management software, no matter what computer or handheld you've got.

She's Alive!

...just barely. Was in Houston for a whole week for the Texas Library Association's Annual Conference--thoroughly enjoyed the experience of being a Program Planner, and am now thoroughly enjoying not working on that at all for awhile!

In my personal life, we moved into a new house--in the middle of a semester of fulltime work, fulltime school for me... so that's why I haven't been around much. The general theme of my life at this moment is: "Eeek." And also, "Is it May yet?"

May 15th, I get a tiny piece of my life back. I'm looking forward to having the time to explore several class projects in more depth--two of them have potential as pilots for more in-depth research projects, and I have a separate research project I've wanted to work on for awhile now. All three revolve around libraries, and two of them are directly related to library interfaces with distance learning.

I'd better get back to all of it--just wanted to let this poor little blog know I haven't abandoned it!

Tips on Getting Published

Great question in the comments today, and my answer ended up being so long that I'm going to make it an actual post. (Thanks, Joan!)

Question: Any tips on how to get involved with publishing. I've been a librarian for 2 years now.

Hi, Joan!

Note: with many thanks to Dr. Marc Cutright and his Fall 2008 EDHE 6500 "Essentials of Academic Publishing" course.

Well, what I did was subscribe to a couple of blogs that compile librarian publishing/presenting opportunities. When I found calls for chapters, articles, or book reviews that fit my interests or job duties, I always submitted something.

Here are the two I read the most:

• A Library Writer's Blog
  
• Dolores' List of CFPs

Book reviews are a great way to get started. They are usually short (about 1,000 words is average), you sometimes get a book for free, and editors are often dying to get someone to offer to write them. Most faculty lean toward writing articles because they often count for more toward tenure--so there is a lack of good reviewers out there.

Look up a journal online that you read a lot, or that fits your interests/job well (for instance, I chose the Journal of Web Librarianship because I'm interested in digital collections and distance learning). Find the contact information for that journal's book review editor; they are often posted, but if not, write the journal editor and request that information for the review editor.

Write up a professional inquiry letter, expressing that you're interested in reviewing a book for them. You can suggest a book you already have in mind, or they may have a list of books on the website that you can choose from, or you can simply ask if they have books that are in need of reviewing. Sometimes they will give you a free copy; if they don't have one available, you can also contact the publisher directly and let them know you're reviewing it--sometimes they will then send you a copy. (I have had both experiences.) Sometimes you're on your own, although I've written five book reviews and haven't had to pay for a book yet.

In the letter, also clearly state your professional credentials. If the journal has a particular focus, mention how that is related to you and therefore why they'd be interested in having you as a truly qualified reviewer. For instance, when I wrote to the Journal of Web Librarianship, I mentioned that I am a digital collections librarian. When I wrote to the International Journal of Comic Art, I mentioned that in addition to my MLS, I have a MA in Art History and am an avid comic reader--pointing out that I have some critical, scholarly background in the visual arts.

The cardinal rule is to never, ever, ever, send out an unsolicited book review or article in its entirety, until the editor agrees to publish it. Just send out a letter first, inquiring if they are interested. I've heard horror stories where three months go by without a response from the editor, so the person sends the review/article out to another editor, who then publishes it just as the first editor decides to publish it, as well. Huge problem. If you've just sent a letter, there's no risk of mutual publishing.

That's a huge long mess of information, and trust me, I've got more if you're interested--just leave another comment, or email/IM/tweet me. I just took a course in academic publishing last semester, so it's fresh on the mind!

This Year in Publishing

I kept wondering for awhile if any of my writing work would pay off. I've been writing and submitting things for over two years, and I'm just now beginning to see the results!

I submitted two encyclopedia articles two and a half years ago, and they are finally being published in the Facts on File Encyclopedia of American Popular Fictionm due out any day now (eee!). Two book reviews that I completed in 2006 and 2007 but had delays were also just published in the Journal of Web Librarianship, released in January at the same time my book chapter with Suzanne & Annie came out.

I've now got two book reviews pending completion--one submitted and one in the works, one for the International Journal of Comic Art, and one for ImageText. And then I'm working on two research projects, and one more on hold until summer, that I'm hoping to send out starting in May. Whew!

Presentations are certainly easier to pitch and have quicker pay-off, but I'm determined to shift my professional development toward publishing. I have a far smaller travel budget now, and even more so I simply don't have the time for traveling as much, with the course load I've got. I'm hoping to make a habit of having several writing projects going on at once, in order to produce a good body of work each year. We'll see how it goes.

I simply struggled for a long time to find things to write about. Book reviews are pretty simple (and I really enjoy them--getting encouraged to read and discuss books, what's not to love?), but my article ideas tend to require an inordinate amount of research time that it's difficult for me to commit at the moment. Two of my current research projects take quantitative analysis, and one is a qualitative study.

I'm curious to know what other academic librarians are publishing.

• Are you writing similar research-oriented articles?
• Or focusing on library issues and practitioner-type pieces?
• If you have faculty status at your institution, are your articles ranked by type as far as tenure or a performance review?
• How pressured do you feel to publish--or are you motivated to publish for your own reasons?