DETRITUS PRESS

The Believer

I ran across a reference to this magazine at work while catalogging the editor's new book. I haven't seen any updates to the web page since I first linked to it a month ago and because I live in the middle of nowhere I've not yet been able to get a copy of the zine. A cousin in Texas is getting a copy to send to me and if I like I will subscribe. In the words of singer/songwriter Todd Snyder, "I believe in everything" so this should be right up my alley.

Actually, the only thing that I believe in is the imagination.

A friend-from-work's mother died this weekend so I'm going to the funeral home this evening to pay my condolences. It will be the first dealing with death I have had since my mom died in January. If it weren't this particular friend I might consider not going at all, but she has been so good to me and I have so much respect for her that I could not imagine not going. Her sister also works at the _______ with us but I do not feel as close to her. I suppose that even if I did not feel this connection with Mary the brute force of the number of people of that I know that are involved in this death would have compelled me to go.

I've been in funk this week since I heard the news of this death but had not really connected it to my failing spirits until now--just as I'm getting ready to go to the funeral home. I'm certain that I will never get over mom's death, though I do find that I am becoming less concerned about my own.

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My wife asked me yesterday (roughly paraphrased) "what good are blogs anyway?" I couldn't come up with a short answer other than to suggest she look at a few. Of course blogger's server was down when she went to explore, so I thought that I would post this rough outline of thoughts and questions about blogging and its applications that I hope to address as I work on the Detritus Press.

As an explanitary note: Though I had been thinking about creating a blog for some time, an email thread that I was a party to got me thinking that some of those posts would be suitable for publishing in this type of forum. It struck me that email threads were like an auto-transcribed form of oral history and that a web log would be an excellent way of presenting the history to a larger audience.

1. Why I think this is interesting


1. Library geek studying the collection of information


1. experience cataloging books


2. experience of porch talks on a summer interview expedition.


2. Thought on efforts to resolve the past into a consensual reality


1. Do we know more about the past than we do about the future?


2. Conclusion: Chaotic state theory


3. Witness of the efforts to control the resolution of reality


1. grass roots campaigns


2. media censorship and editing


3. PR campaigns: the collusion of marketing and development.


2. Thoughts on the collection technique of the email chain published by a blog


1. Concept of threads: email and bulletin boards


1. Large/widely dispersed groups sharing information


2. Discord expressed openly


3. Auto-transcription in the of ideas expressed traditionally through oral history


4. Changing nature of letter writing


1. Duplication: Jefferson’s contraption


2. The break with intimacy


3. Misinterpretation of irony/sarcasm


4. Knowing your audience


2. Are you your avitar? http://www.ccon.org/events/baychi1.html


1. Different types of personal information.


2. Your statistical persona


3. How do you control your public face on the net?


4. Your web footprint


5. This question from another perspective (see web site)


3. Blogging as a publishing technique.


1. Who reads them?


2. Distribution

The weekend's here. I felt productive at the end of work today--I have a hard time remembering the last time that happened. Starting to settle in to the new job as a catalogger. The job exists on a metalevel that I feel comfortable with. The biggest hurdle has been constructing Dewey numbers. Most of the work is copy cataloging, so there is nearly always a suggested number but the trouble has been trying to decypher the existing collection and come up with unique numbers that match our current cutter conventions. Biographies are the worst.

I hope to jump right into it again on Monday and work to increase my speed. My understanding of MARC formatting has definitely improved...blah, blah, blah.

Boring, I know, but I like my new job.

OK, so I'm working on this maybe just a little too much, but I have the day off from work and have had the house to myself all day--why not? I'm trying to get a comments script to work on each of my postings. There may be nothing worth commenting on yet but I don't think that a blog is complete without some form of feedback and I like the idea that user feedback will be open to anyone who happens to be reading. This post is meant to test the script that I just added to my template.