Publications

Caryn Anderson

Passengers going to Hoboken...
Census 2000: American Factfinder
The Super Catalog: Integrating Systems in Academic Libraries

Passengers going to Hoboken...

Robert Pinsky did not write poetry as a child. He didn't read it either. He played games instead - games with rhythms and words. New words sounded the starting bell to let the games begin. Just introduced to a woman named Mary, perhaps she might be quite contrary? Or he'd try it backwards just for fun: Y-ram, Y-ram, Y-ram... too many rams in the barnyard. Or a conductor droning words over the rattling tracks: "Passengers going to Hoboken, change trains at Summit..." Is there a word like onomatopoeia that covers a whole sentence? Mimicking a train gaining speed and ringing it's noisy bell, he chanted the rhythm over and over - so absorbed he'd often miss his stop.

"Passengers going to HO-boken, change trains at Summit..."
"Passengers going to HO-boken, change trains at Summit..."

Kind of infectious once you get the rhythm going isn't it? An even if you're saying it very, very quietly, under your breath, barely mouthing the words so the other people - in the office, on the bus, at the station - won't think you're talking to yourself, it is physical. You can't just think the rhythm or the sound or the feel of your tongue. You have to nod your head and breathe it out and shape your mouth in at least a hint of speaking it aloud.

And now you begin to understand what Robert Pinsky means when he says that the true medium between the poet and you is not the text of the poem on the page, but the resonance of one human body pulsating that symbolic code, making uniquely personal vibrations.

Maybe this is why I never really liked poetry before - I never really grasped the importance of speaking it out loud. I never understood that the letters on the page were icons for experiences, not just ideas - surrogates for the vocalization of the poet, instructions for tuning and harmonizing and playing the body.

I feel now as I imagine Helen Keller must have felt on that day at the water pump - suddenly opened to a whole new world, frantic to know the names of everything she could touch, wearing out Annie Sullivan's fingers which couldn't spell fast enough for Helen's hungry soul. I need poetry - now! I need to devour every poem I can find and play the medium to the poets I never knew. Why didn't I get one of those poetry books at lunch? It's probably better I didn't because then I would need to vocalize - and I don't know if my fellow commuters would be as enthusiastic.

I may have fallen victim ot false assumptions - perhaps my fellow commuters would be enthusiastic. Underlying Pinsky's Favorite Poems Project are three ideas: poetry is a bodily medium; contrary to the stereotypes of Americans, there are many of our fellow citizens who love art and poetry and poems; and public readings are good for the community. The products of his Favorite Poems Project, the anthologies Americans' Favorite Poems and Poems to Read, are certainly testament to these ideas. Additional evidence is a third volume proposed by the publisher which will also include a DVD of the audio-visual record of regular citizens acting as mediums between the poets and the public through vocalization of their favorite poems.

These collective mediations of absent poets by neighbors, postal workers, students, lawyers, gardeners and mayors of all languages, races and religions have demonstrated not only that public readings are good for the community but that poetry is alive and well in America. But I'm sure many of you know this already. All I know is that I'm desperate to get home. I must have a book of poetry somewhere in my house?!? God help my husband and my cats tonight. Until then I'll have to settle for...

"Wellesley Farms next stop, exit to the rear of the car..."
"Wellesley Farms next stop, exit to the rear of the car..."

For more information on the Favorite Poems Project, see http://www.favoritepoem.org. Poems recited by Pinsky at the luncheon: To Earthward by Robert Frost, Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden, The Seventh ("A Hetedik" in original Hungarian) by Attila Jozsef, and Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats.

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Census 2000: American Factfinder

The greatest tragedy of the Cenusus data and its web site has been that it is impossible to mine the rich information that should be there - and that certainly is there. In a one hour period, Arthur Bakis fo the Boston Regional Census Office introduced workshop participants to the new American Factfinder web site. He explained the previously impenetrable wall of data and options in a way that made sense and was even fun (the multi-color visual/thematic mapping of the data on national, state and local maps is very cool." It is amazing the information you can get, down to a city block, if you just know these few simple things:

• the difference between the four Summary Files:
  • 1 is data from the short form for everyone;
  • 3 is data from the long form from a sample of the population; and
  • 2 and 4 correspond to 1 and 3 but are cross-referenced with race data.
• the hierarchies of geographic unites down to census tracts and block groups
• the basic types of information and the viewing options you get with each of the six main categories for viewing data: Fact Sheets, People, Housing, Business and Government, Data Sets, Maps and Geography
• the fact that you can always "tweak" the data in your report very easily from a little line at the top called You are Here

If this has piqued your interst, call the Census and have them train you - for free! Impress your boss, wow your patrons, entertain your friends and neighbors. Who knew the Census could be that easy?

Boston Regional Census Office: (617) 424.0510, boston.pdsp@census.gov, or web site - http://www.cenusus.gov (the link to American Factfinder is on the left vertical menu bar)

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The Super Catalog: Integrating Systems in Academic Libraries

The future is here. The dream catalog - providing one-stop online search access to library collections, databases, e-journals and web resources - has arrived. Struggling to streamline functions and develop better features to benefit users as well as administrators - it has arrived. Refer to it as metasearching, parallel searching, federated searching, broadcast searching, cross-database searching or as search portals - logic and technology are bridging the gap between science fiction and real life in the heady, and sometimes jerkily awkward and limited way, that ATM machines, microwaves and VCRs did in their infancy. For each of these now ubiquitous technologies, there were the "early adopters," as Everett M. Rogers first called them in 1962, who invested in these new products and worked through the bugs together with the "early developers" to generate today's compact, flexible and diverse systems. The "early adopters" of these nascent super catalogs at Boston College (Theresa Lyman, Digital Resources Reference Librarian) and the University of Connecticut (Heidi Abbey, Digital Collections Librarian) came to the NELA conference to share their experiences with systems designed by "early developers."

Both schools chose "metasearching" systems pective catalog vendors providing their respective catalogues. Boston College chose the MetaLib system of Ex Libris, while UConn has selected ENCompass, a product of Endeavor. Both indicated that they specifically chose to get involved in these projects because of the opportunity to help shape the way the products would ultimately be developed. Boston College has focused on the components of the MetaLib system that would allow them to go "live" to their community as soon as possible. Their January 2002 launch marked the first in North American. As such, they have the more developed system which you can test at their web site: http://metaquest.bc.edu/ (log-in as guest and/or review the MetaQuest Quick Guide in PDF at the bottom of the page). UConn preferred instead to focus on the component of the system that would allow them to manage their digital collections. They have not yet gone "live" with the search system, but the descriptions of their management system were as impressive as Boston College's working system for searching and managing resources.

Each system consists of two basic components. First, there is the searching system which allows the user to conduct a keyword, author or title search across the library collection, databases, e-journals, and even some indexed web resources. There is a second system which enables the user to "link" directly to the desired resource (e.g. full text) from a citation (e.g. provided by an index database with no full-text access) without having to exit the system, find the relevant resource and then access the citation.

There are limits to how many databases/resources can be searched at any one time, but an advantage of the MetaLib system (which may have a comparable component in ENCompass) is that searches can be saved; an alert system will then re-run the search at regular intervals and advise the user via e-mail when the search returns a different number of results (indicating a newly available resource that fits the search criteria). Users can also set up an "e-shelf" to store frequently accessed resources.

Its easy to see how exciting - and yet challenging - this technology is. User instruction is the number one difficulty. Most users don't realize that they can search only ten collections/databases at a time. All of the other current deficiencies of the system ultimately become user instruction challenges too. The system is currently only designed for simple searches; there is no relevancy ranking system, no thesaurus, and not all resources can be cross-searched, so some subject searches will not perform well. In addition, there is a lack of standards (although NISO launched the Metasearch Initiative in 2003 in order develop such standards). So, the systems give the illusion of comprehensive searching, but may frequently result in users' accepting far less than optimal results without proper diligence.

It is important to keep in mind, however, that the first microwaves and VCRs were enormous, debit cards only worked at your own bank's ATMs, and telephones were tethered to the wall. If you want to learn more about where the super catalog is going, both Heidi (heidi.abbey@uconn.edu) and Theresa (lymanth@bc.edu) would be happy to accept inquiries.

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