Project "Knit Wit": The Knitty-Gritty

And so it came to pass that on the Friday night just passed your dear besainted Evelin did take up the needles and begin to knit. 

Casting on did not come easily. An ambiguity in the instructions I was following led to several false starts and a knot to rival the most conniving of ear-phone cables. But after about half an hour's faffing I finally got the gist of it and soon had a needle full of loops upon which to play.

Knitting, by comparison, came easily. The greatest obstacle was in overcoming my tremendous reluctance to set free those carefully crafted loops: once needled it seemed a shame to slide them off again. But slide them off we must, for now we have new loops to call our children. 

A few more lines of this and I decided the moment has come to switch to purl-stitch. After all that knitting, purling seemed intensely fiddly. I'm a left-hander, but have been learning right-handed in an effort to stop my brain exploding from all the flipping of instructions it would have to do. But with the purl I began to think that maybe this was a bad idea. However, a few dozen purls later and I found the rhythm of the thing; it started to get easier, just as the knit had done, and before I know it I was purling away like some purly queen. 

...And really enjoying myself. Because here on my needle is some knitting. Real knitting. It's quite messy knitting, but it's my knitting! Knitted by me! It's quite a magical moment, as I start to feel curiously proud of my achievements. I knit this knitting! Me! Look: isn't it wonderful!

Ok, so it's a bit mis-shapen, and full of holes, but it's my first go, and it took me a while to learn the importance of concentration! The original wool ran out, which was something of a relief as it was a bit too fluffly for a beginner, I think, but now I'm on a second ball (introduced just as I began purling (you may notice that I have knitted more than I have purled)) which seems a lot friendlier. Clearly I need to practice some more and get a grip on tension before I start attempting to knit anything wearable. But I'm really looking forward to the prospect. I rather expected knitting to turn quite quickly into something of a chore, but so far it hasn't done that. Rather it's been quite a peaceful and engaging activity, and I'm keen to get back home and do some more. I think I shall keep going at this first effort until it gradually assumes the impression of a scarf.

Project "Knit Wit": Casting On

Inspired by this blog post by Rachel Bickley, I'd been trying to come up with some sort of New (Academic) Year's Resolution, looking for an Essential Library Skill I ought to hone. At this month's Library Camp I at last identified what that skill should be: a talent that no self-respecting librarian should be without: I resolved that I should learn how to knit.

Last time I knitted.

I must declare here at the outset that I am by no means coming to this project completely untouched by the woollen arts: I have knitted before, albeit more years ago than I care to recall (or "about twenty" in your English money). There were giants in the Earth in those days, and I was reasonably well-versed in the arts of French knitting and crochet. But my attempts at conventional knitting were limited to a few lines of jumper, and, ultimately, other hobbies intervened to the inevitable detriment of the British wool industry.

Consequently, I have a ball of wool knocking around the house. I also thought there were some needles somewhere, but I couldn't find them (save the one mis-shapen creature that lives in the kitchen drawer and sees the light of day only when cake comes out of the oven). So today I popped into Coles and got myself a pair of 4mm needles (that's an 8 on the SWG of my youth) which I have been assured will stand me in reasonable stead.

Last time I bought a needle from Coles.

So now I have a pair of needles and some wool, it's time I did something with them. So it is that tonight I will attempt to embark upon a length of knitted wool of some description or other. Who knows, it might even develop into a lovely scarf (albeit quite a mis-shapen one, doubtless full of holes). We shall see. I will, of course, be keeping the house informed of my progress.

CPD23:14 Building Cites

Our essay done, it's time to add our references. I must confess that I have never found it particularly taxing or unpleasant to compile a list of references. Every time I cite a source in my text, I add the details of said source to the end of my document. My Library School were kind enough to provide a number of examples of citations in the course handbook to illustrate the house style. I never lost sleep over punctuation, and although I felt that the house style for deployment of "et al" was a little extreme and potentially unhelpful to any would-be paper-trailer, and that the styles for websites were rather haphazard and inconsistent, I observed the prescribed conventions without a shred of guilt. Occasionally a non-standard source would present itself (usually as a deliberate measure by me to throw in something a bit whacky) allowing some invention on my part (a little joy peppering an otherwise mechanical process (though by no means unpleasantly mechanical)), and it became a superstition of mine to always end the list with a Wikipedia article (if only to demonstrate to the reader that there are legitimate reasons one might cite Wikipedia in an academic essay). It never felt like a chore.

I must admit also to being perplexed by the referencing panic which seizes many of the students that approach the desk here where I work. Perhaps fingers are severed for any comma misplaced; that's the only explanation that seems to fit the fear I've observed. Mind, some of the "How to Reference" leaflets I've seen  in these parts don't particularly help matters: they rather make a mountain of what is in reality quite a simple little mole-hill. You can put too many eggs into a Yorkshire Pudding. All it needs is a few worked examples, and the assurance that not everything will fit them.

And yet this climate of fear has somehow been created. An idea has come to be propagated that structuring a citation is a difficult task. If a body really cares about how your references are laid out, they will prepare a style-guide. Converting between two styles might be a bit of a faff, but a few ^Hs liven up even the darkest evenings.

I mentioned the importance of "the assurance that not everything will fit". If a style-guide lacks guidance for a particular type of material, that seems to me to be a problem for the style-guide and not a problem that ought to keep me awake at night. The point of a citation is to provide our reader with the means of locating the document in question. If the document in question is not of a sufficiently common type as to demand its own thoroughly worked example, I am somewhat of the mind that this gives me carte-blanche to make something up that will suit. To be blunt, there are more important things in writing than worrying about whether a citation meets a certain template.

But not everyone shares my laid-back attitude to the formalities of citation, and there are some out there who get in a real tizz about where to put a comma and what to italicize. Such people should get a grip citation management application.

CPD23 offers three tools for our consideration. One of them, Zotero, requires Firefox, so that's of no use to me, but perhaps of use to you if you use Firefox and the thought of cobbling together a reference makes your arse-cheeks pucker like a cartoon cat's mouth after a dose of alum. Then there's CiteULike, which isn't so much a citation management app as a citation-sharing community: a potentially useful tool for tracking down source material at the outset, then, but of less relevance in this particular scenario. And then there's Mendeley which does a bit of both but essentially generates citations from .pdfs in the same way that a CD ripper can generate tracklistings by comparing the file with an online database.

Just as a CD ripper's tracklist generator is incredibly flash and whizzy, and potentially quite a labour-saver, so the likes of Mendeley can whip up a bibliography in a flash, and switch between referencing formats in the blink of an eye. If switching between formats is something you have to do quite regularly, then a tool such of this undoubtedly has its uses (ideal for serial serial authors). One thing strikes me, however: it's great for journal articles (in .pdf format) but journal articles are one of the more common reference forms we encounter, and also one of the easiest to translate into a citation (very often the information is all there on the first page). Troublesome dateless books, and more obscure sources (unpublished materials, etc.) remain troublesome, and the citation manager can only be of so much assistance in that regard. Spoiled by automation, we might misplace the knack of reference-writing, potentially compromising our ability to improvise on those occasions when the machine fails us.

I don't anticipate creating all that many bibliographies in my future, and when I do I dare say I won't be using any special bits and pieces to do it. But then I'm a funniosity who couldn't care less if my references are scandalously styled, so long as all the pertinent information is unambiguously presented. The more finickity among you may feel a little more inspired.

Lose 500 Words Instantly!

There are many approaches to writing and this post will make no attempt to offer a perfect compositional methodology. But let us assume that you have, through whatever means you find most suitable, cobbled together a fabulous essay, albeit, infuriatingly, an essay that is longer than the word count. In what ways can we cut this thing down to size? This blog post attempts to answer just that question. Determine Your Parameters First, it is very important to ascertain just what the word count is. If you have been allocated a percentage leeway, now is a good time to do that calculation. So if your word count is 3000±5%, your actual word limit is 3150. That's 150 words salvaged without the slightest effort. It might also be worth investigating what penalties apply for essays that exceed the stated length. Assuming that such penalties are prohibitive, there will be more words to cut. Check the small print to establish exactly what qualifies in your word count, and make sure that you're only counting what is absolutely necessary.  In the case of this blog, everything counts. Every single word. There should be 500 of them. Losing Paragraphs Having determined precisely how many words we need to lose, it is time to start going through what we have written and chopping. I prefer to start from the beginning and work my way through to the end. There are several ways in which we can bring the word count down. The easiest, most bloodthirsty way is to lay waste to whole paragraphs. This will potentially knock hundreds off your tally. But it can also be the hardest method: nobody wants to chop off a whole limb, sacrificing a belovéd chunk of text in such a way. Still, the fundamental structure of your essay can probably continue to function without that flight of fancy about cheese (one wonders why you thought it a good idea in the first place). It may be that you felt cheese to be a fundamental part of your own personal relationship with libraries. We all remember with fondness our first Camembert, and many of us will have been given our first box on the way home from a childhood trip to the shops, oversized library books under our arm. Such associations die hard. I myself recall, with great affection, discovering my first Staffordshire Blue among the stacks of Tamworth Library. But as crucial as such associations may be to our own profound love for the library, cheese is not so essential to the question of how to reduce word count. Duckworth & Lewis (1998: 223) explain this phenomenon: "It often happens that Team 1's innings is interrupted and either prematurely terminated or resumed later to complete a shorter innings. When this happens the match officials try to arrange that both sides still have the same number of overs to face."  This is surprisingly pertinent to the issue at hand (far more than any cheese). Consider the following: "If during Team 1's innings the time for a total of 20 overs play is lost, Team 1's innings will be shortened by 10 overs and Team 2 will have their innings reduced by the same amount. With all other methods no revised target would be set in this situation" (Duckworth & Lewis, 1998: 223). Cheeky Chops With the previous paragraph there are a couple of tricks we might employ: we can craftily remove the space between the date and the page number for one thing, and magically our word processor drops another word from the tally. If we are getting really desperate, we might even abuse the hungry (and rather ugly) Harvard style and slip in a cheeky "ibid." in place of the second reference. Also good fun, and terribly naughty, is the ellipsis trick. Not only can we cut great chunks out of the quote with our "…", we can also hide some more words from the computer by dropping the space character from the gap: e.g. "the time for…20 overs" rather than "the time for… 20 overs" (the word count is effectively a space count, so any space removed is a word saved). This approach benefits from being commonly observed in the wild (it may even be in your lecture notes), unlike the really desperate (and unadvisable) removal of spaces after any punctuation (e.g. "really desperate,we might"), which may also be prohibited by the examining body's style-guide (a document with which you ought to familiarize yourself). Perhaps the greatest of all cheeky chops is the Great Appendix Dump. If the option exists for an appendix outside of the word count, and there's anything in your text that is remotely suitable for being sent to that particular oubliette, then get the hacksaw out. Tables are particularly suited to this as they can be especially word-hungry (another approach for the desperate is to take a screen-grab of the table and re-insert it as an image. If you're doing this you might at least have the courtesy to make the table a stunningly beautiful example of Tuftean design splendour). Less extreme is the simple task of going through and compounding any words that can take it: "word count" can become "wordcount". Don't worry if your spell-checker doesn't like a word like "wordcount"; spell-checkers are never very thorough. A quick Google gets over a million hits, and there's a citation in the OED from 1997. But if you find "wordcount" ugly, "word-count" is just as economical. Hyphens can also be slipped into well-trod clichés ("tried-and-tested" for example) if necessary, and common contractions such as "don't" and "isn't" may be casually employed at the cost of a certain sheen of formality. A War on Adjectives and Adverbs Now we move on to the real art of things. It's time to look at every sentence you've written and to excise every word that is unnecessary. This can be as painful as laying waste to whole paragraphs, as beautiful prose has great chunks of wonder ripped from it. There are no hard rules here. Just take each sentence and ask yourself: "could this be phrased in a more succinct manner?". The chopped version of this document should offer some suggestions. All this being achieved, you may well still be hideously over-count. Time then, to start the process again, this time all the harsher. Prose will bleed, but the result will be a concentrated pill of information goodness (assuming the information you squeezed into the essay was sufficiently good). Word Count: 1,081

Having produced an over-length essay, how might it be edited? It is essential to ascertain the precise wordcount. Consider any allocated leeway: if your wordcount is 3000±5%, your actual limit is 3150 (150 words salvaged near-effortlessly). Also investigate what penalties apply when exceeding stated length (it may be worth the trade-off). Check the small-print: establish what qualifies towards your wordcount, ensuring you only count what is necessary. For this blog, every word counts towards a 500-word limit.   Having determined how many words we are over-count, we can start editing what we've written. I prefer to start from the beginning, working through. There are several ways to reduce the count, the easiest being to excise whole paragraphs, potentially knocking hundreds off your tally. Nobody wants to sacrifice chunks of text in this way, but your essay can probably function without that flight-of-fancy about cheese. "…often…Team 1's innings is interrupted and…prematurely terminated or resumed later…[as]…a shorter innings…[with] the match officials…[arranging]…that both sides still…[face]…the same number of overs… If during Team 1's innings the time for a total of 20 overs…is lost, Team 1's innings will be shortened by 10 overs and Team 2['s]…reduced by the same… With all other methods no revised target would be set…" (Duckworth & Lewis, 1998:223). There are various tricks we might employ with the above: remove space between date and page-number; abuse Harvard style with a cheeky "ibid."; make capricious use of ellipsis… Not only can we cut chunks from the quote, we can also hide words from the computer by dropping the space character from the gap (e.g. "the time for…20 overs"; an approach commonly observed in the wild, unlike the really desperate (and unadvisable) removal of spaces after any punctuation (e.g. "really desperate,we might"), which may also be prohibited by the examining-body's style-guide): the wordcount being effectively a space count, any space removed is a word saved.   Perhaps the greatest cheeky chop is the appendix dump. If permitted an appendix outside the wordcount, suitable body-text may be exiled to its oubliette. Word-hungry tables are particularly apt (another approach is to insert tables as images, though perhaps have the courtesy to render it a stunning example of Tuftean splendour).  A less extreme method is to compound words: e.g.: "word count"→"wordcount". Don't let your spell-checker concern you in such actions: Google gets over 1,000,000 hits, and OED has a citation from 1997. If "wordcount" offends, "word-count" is as economical. Hyphens can also interleave well-trod clichés ("tried-and-tested"). Common contractions (e.g.: "don't" and "isn't") may be traded against formal sheen. All other avenues pursued, one should consider each sentence in turn, excising unnecessary words. Can the sentence be phrased more succinctly? There are no hard rules, but this document should offer some suggestions. The above completed, you may well still be hideously over-count. It is time to start the process again, this time all-the-harsher. Prose will bleed, but the result will be a concentrated pill of information goodness (assuming the information you squeezed into the essay was sufficiently good). Wordcount: 500

CPD23:13 The Really Big Society pt.II

In the last (somewhat rambling and ranty) episode, we (or rather I) decided that Wikipedia was a glittering example of society in microcosm. More mechanically, it's the most famous example of a [[Wiki]]. Others exist, of course, and not all of them are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (though an astounding array use their WikiMedia software and so look as if they are). Here's one I visit a great deal. But Wikipedia is the only one to which I've really contributed in any meaningful way, having first edited there in 2002. [[Here I am ranked 3848th in a List of users by pages created]] from 2009. I'm presumably even lower now, having made no significant contribution since 2006.

I voted for this to be the Wikipedia logo in the great vote of 2003.
It came third but is now used for the MediaWiki software application.
(The original plan was to vary the image in the brackets.)

My contributions to Wikipedia dried up through a combination of lack of time (thanks to new work commitments), and some cynicism regarding the way the original anarchic organizational model was gradually being reconstituted into a vertical system of hierarchical editing privileges. But in spite of my lack of involvement, the project has done quite well for itself. This first TV appearance for the project, in August 2003, (the cause of some excitement at the time) seems a long way away now:

You can also read the accompanying article at CNN's website.

Wikis are, by their nature, databases, which is why they seem to lend themselves to encyclopædic projects. But they needn't be so disciplined, and may be as chaotic as any website. In effect, they are a blog-style proforma whose log-in details are shared with visitors. But as a collaborative tool they have one critical drawback:

Edit Conflict: Succentorship without Sneers
Someone else has changed this page since you started editing it.

Yes, while you were busy making improvements to my copy, someone else was being busy too. And now look what's happened. Now you will both rush to try to merge your two versions, and another Edit Conflict is likely to ensue. If only there were some way of collaborating "live" on a page so that you could both see what each of you were doing.

There is such a thing. [[Real-time collaborative editing]] (RTCE) exists and is with us now (indeed, with IRC and chatrooms it always sort of existed, albeit in not such a sophisticated way as with this latest generation of tools). The most famous version is Google Docs, though my first dabblings were through PiratePad: a rather nifty collaborative environment which includes a chat window alongside the main document. Google Docs, by contrast, is a somewhat more elaborate suite of utilities that takes its cue from Microsoft Office. There's even a basic little drawing package where you can work together on little doodles. It's all rather magical out there in the clouds.

Clearly, Wikis and RTCE are brilliantly useful ways to remotely collaborate on material (or even to locally collaborate). They're also great fun to watch, as various bits of document buzz in and out of existence, and people like me write and delete rude words like "BUM".

Next on the CPD23 agenda is Dropbox, which is simply an online repository where you can store and selectively share files. It's 2GB of webspace for the cost of an email address. Given that I already have some webspace, I am not as much in awe of Dropbox as some. If I'm sending something small, I would still be inclined to use email; if I'm sending something bigger than a few megabytes I would likely prefer to pop it on my own webspace, where I knew where it was. That said, the speed and simplicity of Dropbox's desktop public folder (akin to a public folder on a shared network) makes for far less faffing around than operating an FTP client or (as friends of mine often do) uploading to a file-sharing website. In this regard, then, Dropbox could well replace my previous models of file distribution.

Here's a fun by-product of the Dropbox model: Dropbox is really just webspace, just like the webspace you might have with your ISP. Given that everything you put in your public folder has a URL attached to it, one can fill a public folder with HTML files (and associated graphics). In other words, it is possible to host a website from Dropbox.

I can find nothing in the terms and conditions that prohibits such use, and the immediacy of the public folder again trumps the comparative complexities of FTP as a means of uploading web material. For the novice web author this represents a fantastic opportunity to start playing around with HTML: an unintended consequence of a simple but effective tool. So while I'm learning how to knit myself my very own Lund jumper, those of you who've never written the magic words "a href" could be learning how to knit yourself your very own website.

Jeg vil have denne jumper!

CPD23:12 The Really Big Society pt.I

By day, Igor is a gawky, timid wretch with no confidence and no social skills whatsoever. But on the Glittering Russian Dolls forum he becomes Incredible Ingrid, the incorrigible, immaculate Empress of the internet: an outgoing and popular participant in an abstract global drag scene. In his home city of Magnitogorsk there are few physical outlets for his interests; indeed, for someone as shy as Igor there are none. But online he can cast off the ill-fitting mantle of his daily life: the uncomfortable shrinking-violet suit in which he was born. He can be himself: a new self he has created in a fresh mental image. He can be Incredible Ingrid, and in that role he can know no fear!

Incredible Ingrid may or may not be a Glittering Russian Doll
such as the one pictured above (which smells of lavender).

Incredible Ingrid has not limited her online activities to Glittering Russian Dolls. In this persona, Igor has colonized the internet: @IncredibleIngrid's tweets entertain thousands daily; her blog is similarly well-read. Her YouTube account became so popular that it had to be deleted lest one of Igor's work colleagues should stumble upon it. You can even email ingrid@incredibleingrid.co.ru should you wish. 

On Facebook you can find Ingrid Incredibleva, and the Google+ identity police have yet to catch up with an account of the same name on their books. Igor, on the other hand, is largely absent from the internet. 

There are many reasons why we might wish to foster an anonymous identity online, not least that, in spite of its size, the internet that most of us use is an open place with very few hidey-holes. We humans behave differently in one social environment to how we behave in another: our work demeanour is not the same as our wild-night-out demeanour or the personality we present to our children or parents. For this reason, many people try to foster separate identities on the internet: a formal worklife presence on the likes of LinkedIn, a familial pose on Facebook, a cheekier aspect on Twitter...

On the internet there are few hiding places, but plenty

of pictures of Cary Grant being chased by a crop-duster.

If you try to keep this separation of intent while consistently using your own name, Google will undo all your hard work. A handle is required if one is to assume some control over ones identities, and to maintain some sense of anonymity. There is nothing underhand about wanting to manage the audience of any remarks you make: there is little opportunity to whisper on the internet: it's a terribly echoy place and everything you say can be heard by anyone who inclines an ear.

Google+ seems to follow the school of thought that anyone in a hood is up to no good. It is certainly true that, freed of the responsibilities placed upon us in real life by our social cages, the anonymous user may over-exercise their liberty to the point of offensiveness and abuse. My first experience of the web, in 1996, was as one of a number of drunken teenagers causing trouble in the Yahoo Village Pub chatroom; perhaps it is a rite of passage to feel out the boundaries of acceptable behaviour on the internet just as it is in childhood. But trolls hide behind but a tiny fraction of usernames, and the same principle that empowers someone to post goatse.cx on a forum also allows Igor to overcome his shyness and entertain thousands with wit and charm.

They say that those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear, usually before brutally torturing you. We all have something to hide, either from some future dystopian state with access to Google, or simply from those with whom we adopt a different social register. Mrs Goggins blogs about her impressive lingerie collection but would be mortified were Postman Pat ever to find out. It would add undue baggage to their professional relationship. Likewise, Miss Hubbard keeps private her obsessional fanaticism for East 17: she has an image to uphold and that would do it no good whatsoever. Just as a teacher may choose to maintain an almost supernatural detachment from her class, never revealing any personal details beyond title and surname, so the anonymous web user stays aloof from their public life.

 Miss Hubbard throwing some shapes to "Steam" while nobody is looking.

The greatest problem we face in social circles is the crunching of gears that can take place when two of those circles collide: the uncomfortable situation of meeting your boss in a club, or the horror show that is taking a partner home to meet the parents. That's why, as I have discussed many times before, I operate two Twitter accounts, and keep my Facebook account largely at arm's length.

It's also why I'm very dismayed by the latest move at my favourite subscription library: Spotify. Keen to exploit the publicity power of the Facebook wall, they're now insisting that new users sign in with a Facebook account. Of course, you could quite easily set up a sham Facebook account for the purpose, but that would be a breach of Facebook's terms and conditions, and you'd run the risk of having your account (and hence perhaps your access to Spotify) rescinded. The principle at play here is a worrying one, especially in the wake of the Google+ daftness. It's the sort of thing that deserves to be treated with contempt, like Facebook's policy before it.

The great novelty of Google+ was the Circles model, but if you want to address multiple audiences, all you really need is multiple accounts. There's no limit to the number of Facebook or Twitter accounts you can have (save, perhaps, the number of email addresses you can procure), and all can easily be managed using third-party clients like Seesmic. Now Facebook can handle circles too, Google+ resembles more and more the same sort of desert in which we earlier met Cary Grant.

My own "crunching gears", from Showing Some Leg.

What does any of this have to do with CPD23? It is the social media landscape: a masquerade ball. Irrespective of how many personae we present to the world, and the liberation we may feel in so doing, these characters are still held within a social framework, albeit perhaps held in a more comfortable embrace. Incredible Ingrid exists as a real entity, bound by reputation, and by the mores of the social media she frequents. Were Ingrid to play the troll, she would soon find herself ostracised by her peers. Were she to employ the other old forum no-no of sock-puppetry: the creation of a second account to lend assent to the arguments of the first, people would likely come to notice (as they have on so many forums in the past), and Ingrid's credibility would be left in tatters. Such social checks and balances exist within the virtual environment just as they do in the physical realm.

Wikipedia makes for an interesting case study. Back in my day, most passing vandalism was conducted by nameless IP addresses thrilled by the freedom the project offered: "You mean, I can write PISS PISS PISS PISS PISS PISS PISS PISS all over the entry for Bob Carolgees? Wow!: PISS PISS PISS PISS PISS PISS PISS PISS!" It's quite a rush one gets, I'm sure, and also very easy to spot and revert. The more troublesome vandals, those whose amusement was to change dates and insert carefully masked untruths, almost always had a username. This is slightly strange, given that it, too, made their actions easy to unpick once their miscreancy had been spotted, but in a way meant that they could slip under the radar a touch, if only for a moment: the assumption that anonymous users would cause the trouble protected many a naughtiness from being noticed.

Pissing on the internet.

Such characters gained themselves reputations, and, ultimately, bans. They would reappear under new monikers and the circle would turn again. Trolls can be truly tenacious creatures, and troll hunting can prove arduous sport. But all liberty can be abused: such is the price of freedom. The cost of that most prized of liberties, freedom of speech, is that people are free to say all sorts of shit which one must grin and bear. But such individuals are, usually, in a minority. Most people out there in online society are decent types, although they may not necessarily agree with you. A curious phenomenon oft observed on Twitter and Facebook is the 'unfollow' / 'unfriend'. At some point you begin to follow somebody, presumably because they said something or did something of which you approved or agreed, and then at some point later they say something with which you do not agree (perhaps something which even offends you) and you remove them from your feed.

This is all well and good if one treats the feed as a form of entertainment: other users are performing jesters placed there for our pleasure (dance for me or I will turn my attentions elsewhere!). But if our feed is to genuinely be a representative social community (in the way that, say, a forum may potentially be), a certain tolerance is required. Some views are hard to stomach, of course, and some are downright unpleasant. A little discrimination in the friends we choose is inevitable, as it is in the real world. It may be that in the balance of things, the 'offensive' posts outstrip the 'assenting' or 'amusing' to such an extent that a user is rendered intolerable. But tolerance operates on both sides. A user who actively divorces themself from opinion other than their own cannot realistically be described as tolerant. Rather, they are sheltered. I type from a liberal perspective, from which I have observed several who appear to genuinely believe that The Guardian represents some sort of middle ground or normative opinion. I would love that this were true, but it demonstrably is not. Such people exist within a bubble, and this self-imposed ghettoization occurs with a particular frequency on Twitter (moreso than Facebook, whose old-schoolfriend model may lend a degree more patience).

I am not trying to say that one should sit there tolerating the intolerant, or that those embarking on an approach of comfortable isolation from opinions they dislike are necessarily wrong to do so. Rather I am attempting to illustrate that some online social realms are communes and not (as some of their membership may believe) representative microcosms of the wider world. The Glittering Russian Dolls forum specifically caters to a single-issue interest group: while their broader outlook and politics may vary, the majority of its users are cross-dressing Russians of one form or another. The modern social networks can pride themselves on a potentially wider scope of interests than a single-issue forum, but may end up limiting themselves on the opposite axis: the core interests may vary while the outlook and politics fix.

These two axes will limit the size and variation within our online society. We may be both topically and socially specific: "27-year-old Vegan Librarians for the Monster Raving Loonies in Basildon"; we may even be utterly liberal on both counts and befriend everybody we come across. More likely, we will have to balance the two scales in search of a happy medium.

 "A happy medium."

The power to sanitize our physical environments of conversational flash-points is largely lacking in the fleshier reality, though many a nascent social community will attempt to embargo talk of politics or religion lest it escalate into thermonuclear war (or at the very least a duel of noughts and crosses). But online, not only can we assume an ideal face, relinquishing the baggage we have to lug around in the real world; we can also prance about in an ideal community where everyone agrees with us and there is never discord.

Dawkins takes on the Vatican's new supercomputer
in a testy game of Global Theological Debate.

The problem with such closed communities is that they are sheltered not only from the grimmer reality but also from arguments that may advance their own position. The King who knows nothing but the yea-saying of his courtesans knows nothing indeed. The peasants storming the Royal Palace are presumably doing so to express their love for him all the closer. The perfect isolation is a denial of a grimmer imperfect world and is not necessarily a healthy approach.

A similar state of affairs exists in the physical workplace: not least the old cliché (all too often in place) of a management structure that refuses to heed the advice of its workforce, or that other oft-seen tragedy of the blinkered organization, unaware of rival innovations. Other points of view may be inconvenient but they exist, and will ultimately have to be negotiated. As hard as it may be to accept, they might also, on occasion, be right.

A not uncontroversial model for dealing with terminal illness.
Also patronizingly employed by managers who wish to
demean the contributions and concerns of their employees.

Let's try to tether this thing down again before it drifts into a rant about management intransigence. For a society, be it on Earth or in Cyberspace, to be anything other than a police-state, it must be tolerant of ideas and actions of which it does not approve. It can condemn such actions, it can question them or stand aloof from them, but it should not completely ignore them or deny their existence, sticking its fingers in its ears and singing "la-la-la". Ideally it should engage with them, though this can be arduous and far from fun, and will all too often ignite into a flame war as passion trumps empathy. But an effective society must face its demons, not hide from them behind the settee of a silencing 'unfollow'. In a truly free society, any member is allowed to talk shit, and any other member is allowed to listen to that shit and decide how shit it is. There is no censorship. Some coprophages in our society may swallow the shit gleefully, which is a shame, but then it is the rest of society's job to educate those poor individuals in the nutritional failings and potential health-risks inherent in said shit.

This is all speculative philosophy, and quite what it has to do with the pockets of librarians that exist online I'm not entirely sure. We're all a lovely lot, after all, and despite certain rumours of cliquedom, the librarians of Twitter are undeniably welcoming of anyone willing to associate with them. But should discord ever strike in our virtual stacks, what strategies might we employ to overcome it?

When two minds meet online, the difference between their respective perspectives has the potential to be proportionally as great as the geographical distance involved: the internet is the greatest mass long-distance communication device ever developed; pen-pals were never so sociable. This just adds to the mix of philosophies, and the soup of shared experience found online. But as communities merge, certain absolute values are found to be less absolute than was believed to be the case. At Wikipedia (an exquisite example of the commune made microcosmic good) a certain naïvety was revealed in the aspiration to the NPOV. It was all too quickly discovered that the neutrality as perceived by one individual was different to the neutrality as perceived by another (any articles relating to the Irish or Palestinian 'Questions' offer excellent examples of this, but the problem is broader than territorial politics). This classic infographic charts some of the more fiercely fought Edit Wars in Wikipedia's brief and violent history, and indicates that it wasn't just on the location of neutrality where cultures clashed (see also [[Wikipedia: Lamest edit wars]]). Many such battles would stretch on indefinitely were it not for interventions. But while some disputes would face the lock of arbitration, others could be inventively resolved. My favourite case was [[Football]]: With so many nations using the term to mean different games, much energy was devoted to the question of what should occupy the page: common sense might suggest we duck the issue and just have the page as a disambiguation, but the Association crowd felt passionately that they were rightful owners of the term, which would ire the Americans, and cause splutters of derision from the Rugby fans. After some discussion a glorious compromise was reached: the page should be a genealogical history of all the Footballs. Consider this masterful opening paragraph: 

Football may refer to one of a number of team sports which all involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball with the foot to score a goal. The most popular of these sports worldwide is association football, more commonly known as just "football" or "soccer". Unqualified, the word football applies to whichever form of football is the most popular in the regional context in which the word appears, including American football, Australian rules football, Canadian football, Gaelic football, rugby league, rugby union and other related games. These variations of football are known as football "codes".

 That's the sort of thing of which society is capable if it puts its mind to it.

Library Camp: Call me Sarah if it makes things easier...

After a long soak in the bath, getting all the mud out of my knees, it's time to report on the fascinating cake-fuelled jamboree that was Library Camp. The camping was largely confined to flamboyance, moreso than any tented, fireside frollicks (I'd brought my blanket for nothing, it seems), but I can turn my hand to both, and embraced the Aquarian spirit of the "unconference" with a spring in my step (albeit weighed down by the blanket in my bag).

Mabel's tale of cake and camping would prove inspirational.

A diesel leak at Burton-on-Trent livened up an otherwise clockwork journey down, but well before half past nine I had already scrawled some illegible half-sentence on a green paper foot, and rebeliously attached it to the wall with magic tape rather than the prescribed aerosol. That being done it was time to cling pathetically to the skirts of @rachel_s_b (as is tradition) for the immediate social ice-breaking before spotting @LibWig and the impressively yellow-stockinged @theatregrad (both formerly of this parish) to compare dissertation notes and mourn the theft of my formerly-flowing locks. On the subject of locks and impressive colour, it would be amiss not to again congratulate the hair-dying talents of @JenniferYellin, whose vivid purple barnet provoked envy in many an undelegate, myself included (not that I have much to dye at the moment, having fallen victim to an over-enthusiastic barberian). In addition to resplendent hair and terrific tights, there was, in @Batty_Towers' telephone's terms a "lot of lovely crickets going on in this room" (where "crickets" is 'autocorrect' for "frockage"), not least @Jo_Bo_Anderson's foxy little number. As much as I would've loved to have added to this frockage, social norms requested otherwise, so I opted for my Lundiest jumper (not very Lundy at all, but Lundier than all my others; to describe it as Lundy on eBay would be a contravension of the terms and conditions regarding item descriptions) which earned a fine compliment from @Girlinthe who asked if I'd knitted it myself. Alas, my knitting talents are not allowed to be described as either "talents" or "knitting", though I rather wish otherwise. Perhaps I should take up the needles and check out that Vogue knitbook again so that I might join in with the #knitcamp at next year's event. 

The formalities of the day began with a circulating microphone by which we might each introduce ourselves to our fellow campers, and express what we hoped to achieve from the day. This was a lengthy process, revealing a startlingly large number of Sarahs congregated in the one place, and all the jokes that one might choose to employ at such introductions were soon exhausted long before the microphone reached me. I think I came up with something about how I intended to "point at all the people I recognize from Twitter". This was not always easy: while @lemurph made herself plain by covering herself in Cumberbatch, and profligate and unambiguous use of labels rendered @MichaelStead similarly easy to spot, @llordllama is much less woolly than his avatar might suggest, and @bethanr, who was shrewd enough to recognize me as my Kingly self in spite of my lack of ermine, had herself neglected to don her recently characteristic lemurs. Still, much pointing opportunities did indeed present themselves throughout the day, and it was also good to see (and catch up with) many familiar faces from the New Professionals Conference earlier this year.

In addition to being a point-fest and knitting circle, Library Camp also offered some opportunity to discuss and consider ideas of library theory and practice. This aspect of the day began soon after the introductions, with a slightly chaotic 'pitch' session (during which I had a small nap) that culminated in the hasty establishment of a timetable of events in the form of a lot of post-it-notes on a whiteboard grid. Once the immediate congregation had died away, and it was possible to get close enough to the schedule to read it, it was time to exercise one of my least favourite activities in life: Decision Making.

For first period, I decided to take a virtual tour of the forthcoming Birmingham Central Library. This was conducted in that curious nightmare world that is Second Life. I dabbled with Second Life a good five or more years ago, and just fired it up again to have another mooch around Brum for blogging purposes, only to have to start from scratch, building up a new avatar because the latest version doesn't seem to support my old login. Anyway, the horrible clunkiness of Second Life aside, this project does at least give a rough idea of how the new library will be, although they haven't dared make an aural prediction of how the acoustics will operate given that the children's library is right at the bottom of the atrium. The atrial design is my biggest concern, though I am pleased to see that the reference study is behind glass so will likely be isolated from any rising din. There are also a couple of exciting roof gardens, and it will be interesting to observe how they will  come to be policed, from a book security perspective.

A Saint's Eye View of the Shakespeare Memorial Room 
which is moving house for a second time.

Perhaps the greatest feature of the new library is the Book Rotunda (I am unaware of any Bull Rings in the new library, but there are at least two Rotundas): a proper bit of library pornography: five rings of mezzanined full-wall bookstack (although if the Second Life render is anything to go by, one has to have the power of flight to reach the gallery walkways). This vast array of tomes means more material on display than was previously the case (although there will still be two floors of closed stack in the place).

Music practice rooms, and perhaps even instrument loans, are intended, adjacent to a rather curious amphitheatre thing that reminds me of a smaller version of Sheffield's sorely missed Hole In The Road. Speaking of dead modernist masterpieces, what will happen to the externally stunning (though by all accounts internally infuriating) current library remains unknown. 

You can find the planning documents for the new library here, although they reveal only so much. One gets the impression that the finer details (or the practicalities) will be aptly improvised once the building is up.

First period over... let caketime begin! Oh so much cake... Everywhere, cake...

And then to the second session: Special Collections. Moments after taking my seat I felt a particular sense of comfort and proper place: it is my career ambition to have myself a Special Collection, and this session seemed to confirm that such desires were soundly placed. I cannot express this curious sensation of fit in any sensible, logical, meaningful way, but it possessed me all the same. The natter that followed (natter being the right word for it, I feel) was a meandering one, taking in the lessons from the museum sector regards space and display; the possible destiny of many libraries as the White Dwarf that is a Special Collection; the benefits (and inherent drawbacks that accompany them) of blogging and digitization... It was a fascinating little discussion and one of my highlights of the day, if only for seeming to confirm my desires.

Time for some more cake, methinks. Lots of cake. Oooh... lovely cake!

The next session (considering the Library as repository) saw us take up arms against our sea of troubles lest our books be metaphorically water-damaged. Swimming in that sea we find, on the one fin, publishing rackets that gleefully rent out to us (electronically) the journals we used to own (physically), and on the other, overly demarcated local government communications departments getting in the way of simple promotions: the behemoth of bureaucracy that is the price of a local position. We considered the balance of floorspace between study and storage, the rise and rise of Local Studies, and the importance of the library as sanctuary and public environment. Throughout there was a sense that libraries need to work together as consortia if they are to overcome many of the more corporate obstacles faced. Given the nature of local government and tendering rules, this may not be as easy for public libraries as it is for plastic robot dinosaurs piloted by teenagers.

 If I could've found footage of the Battle of the Planets 
spaceships coming together I would've used that instead.

But enough of such library talk... there is cake to be eaten. And sandwiches... [looks at sandwiches]... Forget the sandwiches... there is cake!

Several slices of cake later, and it is the afternoon. Time for another session, this time from the impressively bearded User:Pigsonthewing, who I first encountered in a different life back when I lived on Special:Recent Changes. He talked about how museums, libraries and galleries can use Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons as a cunning mechanism for releasing and hosting content. For example, an event in which keen editors were let lose on a particular collection produced 1,200 articles from the stuff. <wikipedia joke>All sounds dangerously close to Original Research to me!</wikipedia joke> Ask both what Wikipedia can do for libraries and libraries for Wikipedia at the glamourously titled Wikipedia:GLAM project.

Need more cake. Must have cake! Caaaaaake!

By this point, cake was clearly taking its toll on those around the campfire who'd had to get up particularly early that morning (probably tripping over guy-ropes on their way to the toilet-tent). Many a fragmented conversation, blank stare, and lust for coffee were manifesting (coffee being the only known cure for a cake overdose;  apparently most effectively administered by a knitting needle straight into the mainline). I decided to leave the final session to chance, aimlessly wandering into one of the rooms and entering a conversation about #uklibchat. So far I haven't really been involved with this hashtag game, mainly on account of being on the bus / having dinner during much of it. I've also been a bit tentative about getting involved on account of the formal structure of the thing: the introductions, and indeed the preordained running-order, make me feel a bit like an interloper by the time I arrive in this corner of Twitterton. This is silly, of course, but then so am I. The speed at which conversations operate also puts me off a little: Do you have any idea how long it takes me to craft some of my tweets - sculpting them down to a perfect 140 characters of concision and elegance? By the time I've distilled the perfect response to Q5, say, Q6 is already skipping down my timeline. I exaggerate to a degree, but the successful nature of UK LibChat means that it often whizzes along in a blur, like a game of ice hockey or some snazzy shoot-em-up. When the pace gets to that level I begin to glaze over a little: TOO MUCH INPUT / CANNOT COMPUTE. I descend into Guru Meditations and withdraw to some more whimsical hashtaggery.

  Computing in 01'30"...

This is not a problem with LibChat so much as a problem with my slow-cooking brain and my pathetic shyness (which can extend as far as Twitter on such occasions that it exhibits even marginal levels of formality). I suppose for my own part I would like a less formal structure, or more liberal abuse of the #uklibchat hashtag: perhaps having it appended to any library query / appeal at any time. But perhaps I should stop being so pathetic, and get properly stuck in, instead. Or maybe I should just dose myself up on cake:

 Would you like another slice of Joss Ackland's Spunky Backpack?

No...! No more cake...! Please, no more cake! I'll tell you anything!

A resident poet (good work if you can get it) then regaled us with his slightly over-delivered doggerel. Not that I minded... I'd had my tickets drawn out in the raffle and was now a bottle of champers better off. If I wasn't already impressed with Library Camp, this would've been sufficient to buy me off. But even without the help of free booze, I feel the whole thing proved a decided success. I enjoyed the informality of it all, and (for the most part) the cake (with champagne in hand, I could even tolerate the rhyming). I want another go! Can we do it again next weekend?!

Library Camp formally over (the only formality of the day), it was time for @deadlylibrarian (of whom I have considerable tattoo envy) to lead us to a pub. Oh, the tales I could tell of what went on that night! Ah, but I see that the embers are dying away on this fire, and your blanket is failing in its duties. Come, let us return to the warmth of our respective sleeping bags and save such stories for future camps. We must get some sleep, for tomorrow I have wool to buy.