Group Gryffindor Articles

Hi friends,

Group Gryffindor has posted supplementary articles for this week's class on our wiki page. So check it out, please!

Richard Intro

Hey I'm Richard. I am the other special student in our class. This is my first class in SLIS, actually its the first class I've taken in awhile.

Originally I am from Brookfield which is right outside Milwaukee. There isn't much there, mostly malls and more malls so I'll move on. I did my undergrad here and got a BA in Psychology though I spent a couple years in engineering. Since then I have mostly been working and traveling when I get the chance. The picture of me is from Costa Rica near Playa Hermosa.

Currently I work at the Legislative Reference Bureau in library services. I do a lot of clippings scanning, meta tagging, circulation, all that fun stuff. I also worked for the WI State Law Library for quite a long time as the circulation assistant. I suppose I should try to get a job with the executive branch next so I can cross all three branches off my list.

Jessica Fairchild Intro

Greetings,
I'm a second year, last semester SLIS student with interests in electronic records, digital information/technologies, archives and records management. Lately I've become interested in the social and cultural aspects of digital information/technologies and how they shape the records we create.

I received my BA, what seems like many moons ago, from UCSD in Sociology and English Lit. While an undergrad I found myself working at Geisel Library and had many wonderful opportunities working in a number of different departments. After several years at Geisel, I took a leave of absence to work for Semester at Sea. I sailed with them on their fall 2002 voyage, and we traveled to many great places, such as Vietnam, Kenya, Brazil, Cuba, India and several others. (FYI: At least when I traveled, they hire 1 librarian position each voyage. I highly recommend this experience to anyone who loves to explore the world, meet interesting people, and eat amazing food.)

Before moving to Madison three years ago, my husband and I lived in Juneau, Alaska. I worked for a whale watching outfit for a few summers and then worked at the Alaska State Archives. I found myself in Alaska, by way of Panama, hoping to make some cash to fund an extended life of leisure back in beautiful Panama. However, I met my husband in Juneau (I know cliche) and as they say...the rest is history. I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl on September 4th, 2008, and each day she inspires me to be a better person and to see the world with new eyes.

I currently work at the University Archives and Records Management Services on the RM side of things. Upon graduation, we plan to move back to sunny San Diego.

Meagan P. (Introduction)

Hi. I'm Meagan Parker, a second semester student in SLIS. This is my dog Dipsy, who is both cute and incredibly naughty. She likes to eat coins.

I grew up in Wauwatosa, WI. I knew from a very young age that I wanted to live in a big city someday, and so moved to Chicago for my undergraduate studies. I attended DePaul University and got my BA in English and a minor in Peace Studies. While at DePaul, I became involved with various social justice organizations both within the university and around the city. Chicago stole my heart, and I'm hoping to move back and work in the public library system there. Through my work at both a homeless shelter/resource center and an after school program on Chicago's West Side, I realized that public libraries combined many of my passions. Deciding that this was how I wanted to "do my part" and be a part of the community led me here to Madison.


In my free time, I enjoy reading, baking, spending time with friends, riding my bike, and looking at cats on Petfinder.com. Unfortunately, several important people in my life are allergic, so I just covet friends' cats and stare longingly at them on the Internet.

Hi. My name is Katie and this is my second semester in SLIS. And also my first blog post. Ever. Seriously.

I grew up in the great city of Milwaukee, WI with my lovely parents and two brothers. I spent the first two years of my undergraduate career at the University of Colorado-Boulder. in 2004, I transferred to UW-Milwaukee and received a B.A. in English and art history. After graduating, I traveled around China with my boyfriend, who was living and teaching there for a year, organized a kick-ass street festival for a local non-profit, and worked as the office manager/factotum for a local restaurant group after breaking my foot while waitressing at one of their restaurants. It’s probably one of the cooler events of my life: breaking foot leads to ginormous promotion. Awesome.

The boy and I moved here in August and have been working/schooling ever since. I currently work at the Kohler Art Library and at Digital Collections. I am interested in art and academic librarianship, print culture, and digital curation. Some non-school/work things I like are reading, gluten-free dairy-free cooking (it’s way more delicious than you think), sewing, pilates, listening to Radio Lab and This American Life podcasts, Netflix, and playing with my two cats, Charlie Baxter and Mimi Lou.

This is a picture of myself celebrating the beauty of a piece of moss (held up to my neck) that I recently found on a hike outside of San Francisco. It was lovely. Unfortunately, soon after my brother destroyed it. Older brothers are horrible. I have two. I'm not even going to get into the time they told me they had put my favorite teddy bear in the oven and turned it into a spoon.

Anyways, this is my second semester in SLIS and my interests are predominately in the public library sphere. I have recently begun working at the CCBC and find children's and young adult books quite interesting. I also work at the Hawthorne Branch of the public library. I received my undergraduate here in Madison, in English and Women's Studies. I am a true and blue Wisconsinite, hailing from the Musky Capitol of the World- Hayward (also home to the World Lumberjack Championships).

I always knew that I eventually wanted to end up in library school, but I took two years off and worked as a personal care assistant to people with disabilities, which I found to be a very rewarding and invaluable experience.

I'm looking forward to the semester!

High Fives All Around!

please allow me to introduce myself:

my name is chris lay, and i'm finishing up my fourth and final semester in SLIS. i am originally from north carolina, having been born and raised in the currently booming ("next atlanta, y'all!") city of charlotte. i accomplished my undergrad at appalachian state in the sleepy mountain town of boone, nc. my alma mater is known and liked in this city due to the fact that our football team stunned michigan state a couple of seasons ago, beating them on their own turf. "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," as they say.

i earned my undergrad degree in the discipline of interdisciplinary studies, which is a fancy way of saying that i took a bunch of very cool humanities courses and strung them together with the metaphorical bubblegum provided by post modernism. i also minored in english lit. for all intents and purposes, as far any career opportunities go, we can all see that i was kinda screwed.

i started working in an elementary school upon graduation and found myself spending more and more time in the library. after working for a year as a first grade teachers assistant, the position of library assistant was created and i very quickly submitted my application. not long after working in the media center, i decided that it was high time to take adulthood by the horns and get a degree in librarianship, which led me to the place i am today.

i am interested in a lot of digital and technological issues, usually pertaining to copyright and the general umbrella of the "free culture" movement. currently i work in the computer lab of second floor college library and in the digital liab of the historical society.

Introduction {Alyson}

Hello. I am Alyson. I did my undergraduate career here as well. I studied Music History and Spanish Literature. I studied abroad in Sevilla, played French horn in a woodwind quintet called “A Plethora of Distractions,” and played French horn in a Punk/Ska band called “Sunshine Policy.”

After undergrad, I took two years off before coming back to grad school. I lived and worked in Argentina for a year. I was in the outskirts of Buenos Aires. I was a volunteer at a nursing home where I did actually play bingo at least once a week. In the afternoons I worked with a feminist Lutheran pastor on issues of Gender Justice and Women’s rights.

The second year, I was an AmeriCorps*VISTA at Inver Hills Community College just south of Saint Paul. I worked their Service Learning Program. It was great place to work and I really enjoyed collaborating with both students and instructors on integrating service into their courses.

This is my first year as a SLIS student, though I took the other 640 with Louise Robbins last spring. I am in second year of the Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian studies program after starting Fall 2007. I will be working on my thesis this semester as well as finishing up with my last two classes for them. My thesis is on the response of different groups to femicides in Ciudad Juarez.

Introduction [Sara A.]

Hello. I'm Sara, this is my second semester taking classes as a special student, have applied for SLIS grad program fall of 2009. I moved to Madison about a year and a half ago from Milwaukee.

My undergrad is from UW-Milwaukee in Information Science. While a student (and for a bit afterward/before) I was also a bookseller, 8 years total. After graduation I worked in a small bindery doing antique book/document restoration/preservation. Before moving to Madison I worked at a large hospital doing medical records management.

Currently I work at the Madison central library. My main jobs right now are the Internet/Computer Sign-Up/Help Desk and Interlibrary Loan processing (which I actually like). I have also worked quite a bit in technical services. I volunteer in the preservation lab at the Wisconsin Historical Society, and will most likely be starting at LTE position there shortly.

I have a variety of library interests but my main interest is preservation and access to antique/rare/historically valuable materials. Specifically creating digital systems and records of fragile materials to prevent loss, but also long term storage, repair, and care. I really enjoy the "crafting" part of book and document repair. Does it seem like I should be getting a conservation degree? Yeah, sorta, but I am also very interested in other aspects of librarianship (and many other things as well, including social justice, public education, environmental issues, information access etc etc etc).

In my non-school/career life some of the things I enjoy are reading (duh), cats, vegan cooking (I'm not strict, but all my cooking is), the Internet, crafting (mostly knitting & embroidery), archery, bookbinding, politics, and tea.

Shauna M. (Introduction)

Hi there. I'm a first-year Master's student at SLIS. I'm still solidifying my areas of research interest, but I enjoy examining issues surrounding digital divides, games, learning and society, LGBTQ issues, tribal libraries, and visual culture.

Prior to coming to SLIS, I was a Reading Specialist in Portland, OR. During the academic year, I taught elementary-aged children at two Title I schools. The funding for my program was geared towards servicing the needs of youth of color and youth from families living below the poverty line. I miss teaching and having the rare opportunity to provide individualized instruction to my students. It was an extremely difficult situation to leave my job and pursue a Master's degree.

That said, grad school has consumed my life. When I'm not on campus, you can find me drinking copious amounts of coffee at Barriques while working on homework. I enjoy crafting, playing video games (mainly RPGs and Strategy/RPGs), reading, making art, thrifting, spending time in the woods, among other things. I also like hanging out with my nearly toothless feline friend, Muppet (aka. Muppettron 2000).

[Intro] Sarah R.

Greetings. I am a second-year Master's student in SLIS. My areas of academic interest include:

The Information Society and its sociocultural, economic and ethical implications. Issues of digital divides, Internet/networked culture, the nature of digital information, information transmission and dissemination,information as commodity, information as currency. Digital technology and Internet policy development. Open source movements. Information organization and access. Findability. Fair use and copyright. Information and/as control. Games, gaming and society. Machine-assisted information search, ranking and retrieval. Undergraduate LIS education. History of technology.

If you're wondering if that might be cut and pasted directly from my CV, you'd be right.

Prior returning to academia to pursue my Master's degree, I had a decade-long career in academic IT, the majority of which was undertaken at this place. I was a TA for LIS 201, and am presently TAing for LIS 202.

I used to have hobbies and outside interests, but I've mostly forgotten them since being in school. I like road biking when the tundra thaws. I am too lazy to go to yoga but I like it. I played Fable 2 as much as possible over break, and I think it's the first time I have ever, ever, ever "finished" a game (as much as you can finish a game of this nature) in my life.

Reading #2, Summary for class

In "The Picture: Growing Economic Insecurity and Inequality," Chuck Collins and Felice Yeskel attempt to illuminate a trend of greater economic inequality in the United States.  The article includes statistics to reveal the economic disparity between the wealthiest and the poorest, occasionally focusing on the differences between African-Americans, Latinos and White Americans.  Racial groups like Asian-Americans are not discussed and the differences between men and women are only briefly touched upon.  

The authors use graphs to visually represent their data and often use comic strips as a tool of social commentary, which they try to avoid directly engaging in with their prose.  They don't pursue deep reasons for the causes of economic inequality, nor do they offer potential remedies.  Instead, the article works as an introduction and is intended for an audience with little or no experience in economics, as they define terms like "real income," "wealth," and "median net worth," which experienced economists would already understand.

The article frequently takes an historical perspective in order to show not only how things have changed over time, but also how things are potentially reverting to levels of the past.  For example, one graphs shows the top 1% of the population's share of the household wealth from 1922 to 2001 (p. 53).  The numbers dip in the middle of this period and then seem to be rising again to previous levels.  A rhetorical question lingers behind all of the statistics: are we making any progress in creating economic equality?

intro

Hello

Welcome to My Life

Hey there-

My name is Zack and I am currently a sophomore at UW-Madison. This semester, I will be applying for the Strategic Communications (advertising and PR) program within the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Also, I am applying for the CIB program from the School of Business in order to have a little financial knowledge under my belt when I enter the field marketing/advertising after college.

Originally, I grew up in a suburb outside of St. Paul, MN. Although I am the youngest person in LIS 640, being the "baby" is nothing new to me - that is, I have an older brother (UW graduate and current medical school student at the University of Minnesota) in addition to my mother and father.

In my spare time at Madison, I am either working as an intern at the UW-Morgridge Center for Public Service, planing events as the VP-Membership of a professional-business fraternity on campus, playing a little bit of ultimate frisbee, working out at the SERF, cooking for in my apartment for my friends (the photo above is me with one of my dessert creations), or studying at one of the various UW-Libraries around campus. If you look around College Library or the Grainger Business Library, you will most likely find me attempting to study.

L. Wynholds

Intro:

I'm a second year SLIS student in the technology track. Before coming to the Library School here in Madison, I had worked my way around a univerisity library system in central California. I grew up in California in a predominantly poor, rural area and majored in Environmental Sciences and German as an undergrad. I was an avid reader as a child and enjoyed a hobby of writing candidly of the velocity of living, although graduate work pretty much precludes having much of a personal life.

Since moving to Wisconsin, I've been working for the Wildlife Disease Information Node, which is a federal information gathering and disseminating agency. I also have a project assistantship with the folklore department working with issues of digital archives.

Lori Bird Intro

Hi, I'm Lori, and I'm a second-year SLIS student. I work at the Beaver Dam Community Library as the youth services librarian. If you looked at the photo in my profile you may wonder why I'm so happy to be on a Segway (Segway the Door Tours). They ARE strange machines, but also kind of fun. No, it's not my main form of transportation. Yes, I'm wearing a helmet. Too bad for you that I didn't post the picture where I'm also wearing an enormous yellow poncho (during a hail storm). I'm looking forward to this semester. I'm also in LIS 645 - Intellectual Freedom, and I think the two classes will work well together.

Announcement: For-credit service-learning with digital media

This is a great community technology project which I encourage students to explore if they have the time and seriousness of purpose to devote to it. (I am willing to sign on as the "directed study" faculty member for any LIS 640 students who are interested in doing it for one credit.)

Want To Help Local Non-Profits With Their Technology Needs?

Want to Earn Course Credit and Gain Valuable Experience in Your Community?

TechShop Madison has service-learning opportunities available to students for the Spring 2009 semester. Credit is given through directed study or a 1-credit add-on to an existing class.

Work with our committed team of student leaders, UW-Madison faculty and staff, and non-profit partners to build the technology capacity of local community organizations. Students work one-on-one with non-profit staff in order to meet the technology needs of the organization over the course of the semester. The Spring 2009 project theme is using Web 2.0 technologies (social networking, blogging, online photos and videos, podcasting) to advance the work of our non-profit partners.

Students from all disciplines are welcome! Good communication skills and willingness to develop expertise in the selected technology topics are required. The 40-hour commitment (over the semester) includes all training and service requirements.

Visit our website to fill out an application:
http://comm-org.wisc.edu/techshop/news.php

Applications are due January 26 at noon.

Contact Nikki Gilbertson at ngilbertson@wisc.edu for more information on the application and interview process.

Course readers are in

The LIS 640 xeroxed course reader is ready at ASM Student Print, for the low, low price of $24.60

Getting ready for Spring 2009

Hi folks. I'm reworking our "digital divides and differences" class for the new semester (as usual) so check back once classes start. This year we have a "One Laptop Per Child" machine to play with, and I'm going to build in some interesting wiki-based writing as well.

Conservative and Liberals Bloggers Get Organized

Court Nominee In the Eye of the Blogger Swarm

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 21, 2005; C01

At 1:27 a.m. yesterday, the Guerilla Women of Tennessee weighed in on President Bush's Supreme Court nominee.

"John Roberts: Married to Anti-Choice Org VP," the group's Web site blared. Another site, A Liberal Dose, asked: "Why does John G. Roberts Hate Our Soldiers?"

And Feministing.com made no attempt at subtlety: "Why John Roberts Sucks."

The lightning-quick attacks came after 50 top liberal bloggers held a 45-minute conference call Tuesday night. "On the left, we've always talked about the need to have an echo chamber," says John Aravosis, a Washington lawyer and gay rights activist who writes at Americablog.com. "We believe the right has a whole media network, from talk radio to Fox News to Matt Drudge. The left doesn't have that because the left doesn't play well with others."

This is the first Supreme Court nomination of the Internet age, meaning that liberal and conservative opinion-mongers are already blanketing cyberspace with arguments, facts, taunts, polemics, gossip and electronic links to raw data, hoping to rally the faithful and influence the mainstream media coverage.

The conference call was arranged by BlogPAC, a political action committee that got some of its members on the phone with Sen. Ted Kennedy on the day that Sandra Day O'Connor announced she was leaving the court. The group has also held calls with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and the liberal organizations involved in the nomination battle, including MoveOn, Alliance for Justice, NARAL and People for the American Way.

Kennedy "reached out to them directly to convey the impact that this decision will have on hundreds of millions of Americans, whose last line of defense for their freedoms and liberties is the Supreme Court," says Laura Capps, the senator's spokeswoman.

Such coordination seems to defy the image of bloggers as iconoclastic lone rangers, pounding the keyboards in their bedrooms and basements without regard to interest-group politics. Bloggers, after all, come from all walks of life, building a following on the strength of their words and ability to draw attention from other Web diarists. They have also proven to be a formidable fundraising force, raising $80,000 on Tuesday for a Democratic candidate in a special House election in Ohio.

The purpose of Tuesday night's call was "to agree on where we want to work as a swarm and divide that from where we want to work individually," says Bob Brigham, a San Francisco political activist who runs BlogPAC. (Its founders include Aravosis and Markos Moulitsas, who runs the popular site Daily Kos.) A swarm, in online lingo, is when legions of bloggers jump on the same issue, as when conservative Web sites attacked Dan Rather's CBS report on President Bush's National Guard record.

"We dumped a ton of opposition research on Roberts" after the call, Brigham says. The bloggers also agreed during that discussion to keep hammering on Karl Rove and the CIA leak story.

On the Roberts nomination, though, not all left-wing bloggers are marching in lockstep. Moulitsas wrote that while Roberts has only two years of judicial experience, "I'm willing to hear the guy out. We're not going to get a Ginsburg, but I'd be happy with an O'Connor-style moderate conservative. For all we know (and for all the religious-right knows), Roberts might be that sort of guy."

Jeralyn Merritt, a Denver defense lawyer who writes the TalkLeft blog, told readers that "it's too soon to start opposing Judge John G. Roberts. Most of us knew nothing about him. . . . I don't think it helps that liberal groups are coming out swinging so soon."

Joshua Micah Marshall, who holds a doctorate in history from Brown University and recently moved from Washington to New York, launched a Supreme Court section yesterday on a spinoff of his Talking Points Memo site.

The first entry was from Yale law professor Robert Gordon, who said of Roberts: "He enjoys the kind of respect Kenneth Starr had before embarking on his anti-Clinton crusade, as a safe, sound man, not an ideological zealot like Edith Jones or wacko like Janice Rogers Brown. These qualities are going to make Roberts's confirmation easier. They are also what make him dangerous."

Marshall says liberal bloggers would probably play a bigger role in galvanizing the opposition had Bush picked a more incendiary nominee. "There will be less fireworks than there might have been if it was a more controversial person," he says. "We're trying to get people who have expertise and are interested in writing in this new medium. I have no particular expertise on jurisprudence."

Conservative bloggers, of course, have been out in force as well. Forty-five minutes after Bush's announcement, National Review Editor Rich Lowry posted this reaction: "Roberts is brilliant and solid. He has a good temperament and he's very likable. There's no downside. . . . And Bush has kept his promise to nominate someone in the mold of [Antonin] Scalia and [Clarence] Thomas."

Says Glenn Reynolds, the conservative University of Tennessee law professor better known as Instapundit: "Bloggers are going to be very big on cutting through the slogans to the facts and holding people up against the statements they've made in the past. They're going to make it hard for Democrats and Republicans who took a different position on Clinton nominees than they have on Bush nominees."

But there has been a lack of enthusiasm among some bloggers on the right. "As someone whose professional life has almost entirely taken place 'inside the Beltway,' Roberts has been far removed from the day-to-day concerns of 'fly-over' America," wrote RedState.com. ". . . The nomination of Roberts serves to increase the disillusionment of these traditionalists with Bush's performance in his second term."

One strength of the blogosphere -- its real-time ability to vacuum up thousands of facts -- has been on display with the Roberts nomination. SwingStateProject.com posted excerpts of a 1997 court ruling in which Roberts, representing a pork producer in a clean water case, was accused of making a misleading argument, according to the Web site. The Liberal Dose site (which featured a doctored photo of Roberts making an obscene gesture) pointed to a 2004 ruling joined by Judge Roberts that threw out an award of nearly $1 billion to 17 Americans who said they were abused while imprisoned in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War.

Aravosis, who helped expose the X-rated past of conservative White House reporter Jeff Gannon, wasted little time. He wrote Tuesday night that Roberts "sounds like a partisan hack" and posted statements from Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, Planned Parenthood, NARAL, the Human Rights Campaign and People for the American Way.

But Aravosis sees no prospect of his blogging colleagues sticking to a set of talking points. "It's like herding cats," he says. "You can get 40 cats in a room, but you can't herd them."