Roboquiz.

I can hardly believe that I just took my first quiz in 20 years. Can you imagine such a thing? But it’s true. The last time I took a quiz I was still deep in my undergraduate career at the University of Chicago. What class was I taking at the time of the quiz? I can hardly remember. It might have been Chinese Pottery. Or it might have been Death and Dying, the tutorial on the ancient burial mounds of Etruscan Italy. It’s hard to recall. But I do know this: It was before there were computers! Or, rather, it was just before computers started being available for all and sundry. Computers were available for NORAD and the CIA and whatnot , just not for students.

In the olden days, quizzes were on Xeroxed or mimeographed paper, and you had a little pencil. You would write on the paper – or maybe you would write on some scratch paper and not on the test itself, as the test might need to be recycled for the next class. You would scribble at top speed, and the back of your hand would the same color of the ink as it shlooped through the lines you were writing (remember, I am left handed). And you would get the dreaded writer’s cramp!

At the end of the hour, the pointy nosed professor (or proctor) would yell, “Time! Please pass your papers up to the front of each row!” And you would. After that, if you had a particularly lazy and silly professor, he/she would shuffle the papers and then pass them out again, and you would grade someone else’s paper.

However, nowadays, things have just gotten so dag-nabbit computerized. The professor sends you a little e-mail to say that the quiz will be available for a certain amount of time and that you will have two hours to do it when you sign on. Worse, you will have only one attempt, and if something goes wrong, you do not get to try again. What if I am doing the quiz at a Wifi-equipped café and the power goes out? Everything will be lost! One thing that the modern era has done is craft a whole new spin on the Dog Ate My Homework excuse. Now it’s “the Wifi went down and caused Blackboard to crash!”

So there I was. Last night, I was so apprehensive, I created this whole outline of the chapters I was supposed to read in the TOTALLY INCOMPREHENSIBLE MANAGEMENT TEXTBOOK. The outline was tied to page numbers so, during the quiz, I would be able to find the proper part of the chapter quickly by looking at the outline first and then going to the book. (Librarian joke: I had created Metadata for the chapters!)

Anyway, after my lunch of chili at Amelia’s Café on Main Street, I decided that I would take my quiz at the tiny Ocean Park Branch of the Santa Monica Public Library. Although this branch is a delightful place to read and study, I must confess it was a risky proposition, as I realized that it was only too possible that the Wifi signal would fail midway through and I would be shut out of the “one time only” access to the quiz. But I figured that it would be worth the challenge to take the test in pleasant environs.

I clicked on the “Enter Quiz!” page and was forwarded to another page, warning me that I had only ONE chance to open the page. How I trembled with terror! I swear I just sat there for two minutes, saying to myself , “Oh my stars! I can’t do this! I can’t do this!” My finger kept inching towards the “yes!” button – but then I snatched it back. It was the elemental “leap into the cold water of the swimming pool” moment made flesh. Of course, I finally girded my worthless loins and entered the quiz.

Quizzes nowadays are kind of funny. There’s one question per page, and you must answer it and click “save and proceed” to get onto the next question. Only once did I press a button and this horrifying balloon appeared on the screen, yowling, “STOP! DO YOU MEAN TO SUBMIT THIS TEST? YOU HAVE NOT ANSWERED QUESTIONS 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14 AND 15! KEEP PRESSING THIS BUTTON IF YOU WISH TO SUBMIT!” You see, of course I had pressed the “exit” button by mistake. I hurriedly clicked “no”, of course, and returned to my work.

Really, I must wonder when they decided all tests need to be like “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” It was all multiple choice, and I have to confess that my outline was definitely the way to go. The most horrible thing, though, was when I finally pressed “submit” and sent the test away. Within 10 seconds, maybe less, I received a bleep from the computer, telling me that the thing had already been graded! I did all right, I must admit – 14 out of 15. But I have decided that, in this online grad school thing, my professor is a robot. How could she be otherwise?

Home From The Metadata War.

Good heavens, I enjoyed sleeping in my own bed last night. You see, I only just got back from the Academic Institute down on the campus of Cal State Northridge, which was the official start of the quarter for this term’s library school studies. And, boy, are my arms tired.

I must confess, I found the entire weekend to be quite an intimidating thing indeed. You see, the thing I already realized when I decided to go to library school was that I had two weaknesses – I am a fundamentally disorganized, quite illogical person. And I have a near-pathological inability to subsume jargon. Well! It appears that this is going to be the quarter for me, then!

On the one hand, I must write an eloquent, informed mid-term report on the scintillating topic of “metadata harvesting” – and how do you do that, by the way? Pick the stuff off the trees? Or is it something that you must find at the bottom of the roots of the metadata bushes, like a potato or carrot?

Meanwhile, on the other hand, I must construct my own database system, with workable search engine, out of, one fears, spit, scotch tape, and string. Long time friends of mine are aware of how clearly I think, so this will most certainly be a terrific challenge. It will look like a Rube Goldberg machine!

I made the mistake of pitching the idea of a poetry database to the professor, who quickly approved it, thus locking me into a project that will probably be quite beyond my reach, particularly if I decide to organize my poems on the level of meter or actual word choice. I might just have to stick to books of limericks, or maybe two line epigrams. We’ll see. On the other hand, I am going to construct the database for my poetry-loving stepfather to test – he’s going to be my Sample User. So that will be very entertaining. High Domain Range Knowledge, Low Information Skills Knowledge, if you know what I mean. (Baby just made his first library jargon joke!)

Because I don’t drive and because the class sessions took place at the ungodly crack of 8 ayem, I set myself up in the hotel that the college had recommended for the weekend. It was a pleasant hotel, and I certainly enjoyed my delicious early morning Hotel Breakfast Buffet with the other students who were staying there and with the genial TAs, but I am only too happy to be home in my delightful bed. The lectures were ferociously intense, and after a point, I felt like I was the cat in that cartoon – you know, the one in which there’s a cat and an angry owner. In this cartoon, the first caption reads, “what the owner says”, and the speech bubble says, ‘cat, don’t scratch the furniture!’” And then, the second caption reads, “what the cat hears”, and the second bubble says ‘blah blah blah blah’.” Well that’s how I feel.

The professor was saying, “In the second column, we have unique validation control and single validation control and entity access recall and collocation of interoperability.” And, of course, by 2 PM on Sunday, I was hearing “blooble blooble blooby boo, gooble gooble goobly goo.” At the end of each day, the class of 50 something or so students staggered out of the library building and down the walk, ashen faced and bug-eyed, like actors playing zombies in an amateur, improvised college production of DAWN OF THE DEAD. Still, I have to confess, I ultimately had a great time. Nothing wrong with meeting 50 fascinating new people and learning new stuff! And nothing makes you feel younger than being in school again. I am extremely motivated to make all this work, I promise you.

Which Library School Project Shall I Choose?

All right, let’s talk a moment about my Information Organization Project for this quarter. I need your advice! The main assignment seems to be the cataloging and organization of some kind of a collection. The basic requirement is that it has to be a fairly large collection – there should potentially be about 1000 pieces that can be organized. Now, I have wracked my brain and come up with the following three possibilities.

My stepdad has a quite comprehensive, yet disorganized collection of 1000s of books on poetry. They are in all different styles, authors, and genres from English to Irish to Indian to Chinese. These could certainly be cataloged in a variety of ways, at many levels of, as the librarians say, “granularity.” I could catalog them by country, by verse style, by author, by genre – the possibilities are endless. This collection would be almost the perfect “echt” library school project, as it consists of books of various types and themes, and I can’t imagine that it would not be approved by the Professor. In addition, the opportunity to bring order to my stepdad’s incredibly chaotic collection is somehow appealing. On the downside, though, I am not actually a huge fan of poetry. But on the other other hand, I don’t think a librarian HAS to be a huge fan of the material he is overseeing, right?

So, for a moment, let’s assume that I don’t choose the poetry books as my collection. If you were to open my poor closet, you would, I am ashamed to say, find a gigantic pile of newspapers. 20 years worth of newspapers! Now, I am NOT an obsessive compulsive packrat, like the sort you see on that TV show “Hoarders,” but each one of those papers has a review by me in it. Some have two or three. Wouldn’t it be a nice thing to wade into those newspapers and catalog all my reviews? I could catalog them by newspaper, as well as by title, genre, theater company, or many other ways. It would make quite a collection, and that’s a fact. On the upside, I know a lot about the theater and it would be rather chuffing to organize my own reviews (or at least a fraction of them). On the downside, I wonder if I could get the project approved by the instructor – and, after that, can you imagine the filthy ink on my hands? And how messy the scraps of paper would make my apartment? The cats would also probably urinate all over the newspapers, I daresay.

Alternatively, but in a related vein, I have at least a thousand actual theater programs stowed in the OTHER closet. And I must confess that I have an archival interest in actually going through them and putting them in some order. I mean, the programs date back from the production of AMADEUS I saw in London in 1983, to the revolting thing I reviewed at the Complex last weekend. It would be quite the walk down memory lane to go through the programs and put them in order as to theater, year, genre – well, who knows how else?

Anyway, so there you have it. Three possibilities for my IOP project! But which one shall I choose? I must confess that I really do not know at this point. I am sort of leaning towards the poetry books – but why not the play programs? It’s so hard to pick. What is YOUR advice?

Cylon In The Library!

The gentleman I saw the other day was a late middle aged, shambolic wreck of a fellow. Tall, lean, and dressed in a filthy blue sweat shirt and jeans. His graying, dandruffy hair straggled down the back of his head and when he smiled his snaggle tooth glinted in the buzzing library fluorescent lighting. He hobbled about on a greasy crutch, which I noticed he was always using when in the library, like he was an elderly Tiny Tim.

“I used to be an actor,” the gentleman croaked. “You know that? Back in the day, I was a star.”

“You don’t say,” I smiled, politely, as, really one must.

“Yahh. I’ll show you. This was me!” He reached into his linty pocket and pulled out a dog-eared scrap of paper, folded many times over. With shaky fingers, he unfolded the paper, revealing the photograph of…. A Cylon from the 1970s.

“That’s me!” the gentleman cackled, pointing at the Toaster (though pedantic fans will point out that The Cylons weren’t called “toasters” until the new 2003 series). I looked fondly at the Cylon. Yes, the photo certainly showed the glittering, gold metallic carapace of one of the monsters from outer space. The great enemy of mankind!

What was less clear was whether the gentleman before me was the chap INSIDE the Cylon. For, as you must know, Cylons are totally metal robots, sealed from the tops of their heads to the bottom of their booties. And you could no more tell that this crazy old loon was inside the Cylon than you could say he wasn’t. He MIGHT have been the Cylon, of course.

After all, in a world where carpenters rise from the grave anything is possible. But, for all I know, anyone could be inside that metal costume. Nevertheless, I smiled and gushed, which appeared to be what the chap wanted. Really, I suppose it is possible the man could have been a Cylon, back in the day. Why not? Or he could have imagined it. In many ways, I think that it would be even sadder if the chap HAD been a 1970s Cylon and was now reduced to near-homelessness, hobbling around the library all day on a crutch. How the mighty have fallen! How we all fall! If he was truly a Cylon, he might have been the most important fellow I have ever met, though.