Reading journal: Autumn Term, Week 10

This is a smidge late, and there is SO much more I could add to it after the last few days (seeing as the first full draft of my Psycholinguistics assignment is complete, hooray!) But here's the most accurate reflection of week 10:

Directed Readings in Syntax

The master of Slavic linguistics,
so it would seem...
Image of Zeljko Bošković
from linguistlist

• Bošković, Z. (1998). Wh-phrases and wh-movement in Slavic. Unpublished paper presented at the Comparative Slavic Morphosyntax conference, Spencer IN., 5-7 June 1998. Available at: http://www.indiana.edu/~slavconf/linguistics/bosk.pdf (accessed 10 December 2011)
• Bošković, Z. (2001). On the interpretation of multiple questions. Linguistic variation yearbook, 1(1), pp.1-15.
• Bošković, Z. (2002). On multiple Wh-fronting. Linguistic Inquiry, 33(3), pp.351-383.
• Cruschina, S. (2009) The syntactic role of discourse-related features. Cambridge occasional papers in linguistics, 5, pp.15-30.
• Franks, S. (2005). The Slavic languages. In: G. Cinque and R.S. Kayne, eds. The Oxford handbook of comparative syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ch. 9. 
• Stroik, T. S. (2009). Locality in minimalist syntax. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. 
• Toman, J. (1981) Aspects of multiple WH-movement in Polish and Czech. In: R. May and J. Koster, eds. Levels of syntactic representation. Dordrecht: Foris. Ch. 10.

Language Acquisition

• Chomsky, N. (1986). Knowledge of language as a focus of inquiry. In: N. Chomsky (1986). Knowledge of language: its nature, origin and use. New York: Praeger, pp.1-14.
• Crain, S. and M. Nakayama (1987). Structure dependence in grammar formation. Language, 63, 522-543.

Psycholinguistics

• Forster, K. and I. Olbrei (1973). Semantic heuristics and syntactic analysis. Cognition, 2(3), pp. 319-347.
• Nicol, J. and D. Swinney (1989). The role of structure in coreference assignment during sentence comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 18(1), pp. 5-19.
• Tyler, L. and W.D. Marslen-Wilson (1977). The on-line effects of semantic context on syntactic processing. Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 16, pp. 683-692.
• Van Gompel, R. and M. Pickering (2007). Syntactic parsing. In: G. Gaskell, ed. The Oxford handbook of psycholinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ch. 17.

...Guess which assignments I've been working on this week!

P.S. And on a side note - a cracking story from my godfather's old classmate, Peter Trudgill - see the very last paragraph here...

Reading journal: Autumn Term, Week 9

Psycholinguistics

• Forster, K. and I. Olbrei (1973). Semantic heuristics and syntactic analysis. Cognition, 2(3), pp. 319-347.
• Hagoort, P. (2003). Interplay between syntax and semantics during sentence comprehension: ERP effects of combining syntactic and semantic violations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 15(6), pp.883-899.
• Libben, G. (2005). Brain and language. In: W. O'Grady, J. Archibald, M. Aronoff & J. Rees-Miller. Contemporary Linguistics. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martins. Ch. 14.
• Van Gompel, R. and M. Pickering (2007). Syntactic parsing. In: G. Gaskell, ed. The Oxford handbook of psycholinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ch. 17.
• Zurif, E. (1995). Brain regions of relevance to syntactic processing. In: L. Gleitman & M. Liberman, eds. An invitation to cognitive science. Vol. 1: Language. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Ch. 13. 

Directed Readings in Syntax

• Heycock, C. (2006) Embedded root phenomena. In: M. Everaert & H. van Riemsdijk, eds. The Blackwell companion to syntax, Vol. 2. Malden, MA.: Blackwell. Ch. 23.
• Rizzi, L. (1990) Relativized minimality. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Ch. 3.
• Rudin, C. (1988) On multiple questions and multiple WH fronting. Natural language and linguistic theory. 6(4), pp.445-501. 

Language Acquisition

• Gass, S.M. and L. Selinker (2008). Second language acquisition: an introductory course. 3rd ed. New York, London: Routledge. Ch. 12.

Research Training

• Tsoulas, G. (2011) The linguist's beginner's guide to LaTeX. Unpublished manuscript.

Away from the studies...

• David Nicholls (2003). Starter for ten. London: Flame.

Work (very) hard, play (even) hard(er)

Them's be the housemates...

From last week's sublime combination of pleasing formative assessment marks, University Challenge madness and a fabulous weekend with the housemates and my favourite German (my REAL favourite German as seen below, not this one), I came back down to earth with a bump this week. Goodbye frivolous fun, hello never-ending reading list and unavoidable assignment preparation. To be fair, getting my head seriously down this week is only for my own benefit, because the more I do now, the more Christmas I'll get for my three-week "holiday". The plan is to get at least one full draft down (out of four!) before leaving York, though after today's effort I have faint hopes for two before swanning off to Salisbury.

...and that be the boy, helping to keep me
sane (and putting up with a helluva lot)

And here's the terrifying, towering, tremble-making topics:
Psycholinguistics: syntactic processing, and the localization/lateralization of language functions in the brain.
Directed readings in syntax: multiple WH-fronting in Czech.
Language acquisition: the Critical Period hypothesis, and ultimate attainment in L2 acquisition.
Phonetics and phonology: ...a little bit of everything!

No sweat, eh?!

Fun with ice sculptures way back when

But to get me through all of that, there's two Secret Santas (my poor housemate won't know what's hit him/her, and there's a linguistics one too), two swing dance events next week and the lovely City of York is kindly putting on one of my favourite December events, the Festival of Angels. I first came to the Festival of Angels in my first year with my housemates at the time, all new and nervous and only two months into my undergraduate degree. Five years later, I have those letters after my name, a few more to work for, and I'm proud to be a budding bridesmaid for one of the aforementioned housemates! Who knows what might happen between now and 2016?

Reading journal: Autumn Term, Week 8

Directed readings in Syntax

• Rizzi, L. (1990). Relativized Minimality. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Ch.2.
• Haddican, B., A. Holmberg, H. Tanaka & G. Tsoulas (to appear). English wh-slifting as an embedded root phenomenon.

Psycholinguistics

• Ridley, M. (2006). Genome: the autobiography of a species in 23 chapters. London: Harper-Collins. Ch. 7 (Instinct).

Language Acquisition

• Bley-Vroman, R. (1989). What is the logical problem of foreign language learning. In: S. Gass & J. Schachter, eds. Linguistic perspectives on second language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–68.
• Schwartz, B.D. & R.A. Sprouse (2000). When syntactic theories evolve: Consequences for
  L2 acquisition research. In: J. Archibald, ed. Second language acquisition and linguistic theory. Malden, MA.: Blackwell, pp. 156-186.

Phonetics and Phonology

• Ladefoged, P. (2011). A course in phonetics. Boston, MA.: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning. Ch. 10.

Away from the studies...

• Milan Kundera (1984).  The unbearable lightness of being. London: Faber & Faber. 

In which mac 'n' cheese, formative assignments and quiz rounds are fed back...

Schlurp, yum.
Image by mallydally

It came to me yesterday, whilst eating copious amounts of exceedingly yummy, real American mac 'n' cheese in hono(u)r of the lovely Emily's birthday, that I have neglected this blog for a while. Whilst I will claim assignments, the truth is that they were handed in 2 weeks ago, and simply stressing about the results is NOT a productive use of one's time. It certainly doesn't excuse my recent lack of procrastinating on Blogger.

In any case, I'm pleased to announce that the work that went into the assignments was largely heading in the right direction, and I'm generally pleased with the results, especially as they're my first pieces of academic work in well over a year. However, there is no room for complacency, as these were only "formative" assignments, and therefore do not count - they exist purely for feedback.

Bad feedback, good feedback.
Glasvegas = usually bad.
Image by adaylikesunday

This in itself I find A Good Thing. Masters is a whole new level, especially after time away from studying, and it's great to have the opportunity to work up to the important summative assignments (which DEFINITELY count). But in that case, you have to actually receive feedback on what you've done, because I'm nowhere near perfect yet (shocker). In one case, the assessor's feedback was meticulous: detailed, comprehensive and clearly tailored to each person's work, despite the fact that each piece was one of 40 or so. In another case, the written feedback was there, but we will also have a one-on-one with the assessor to discuss areas for improvement. And the third case?

Now, this blogpost is certainly not intended as a forum for bitching or slagging or vilifying anyone, so I refuse to partake in any of the above. But as we are required to put in a lot of time and effort, it is so disappointing when a) your result isn't necessarily the one you hoped for and b) constructive suggestions for improvement are not really forthcoming. Feedback seems to be a recurrent issue throughout institutions, departments and levels of study, which only highlights its importance to students of all descriptions. However, there's also a large element of helping yourself get out of holes, so I see a LOT of pre-prep and chasing lecturers in my immediate future.

Quiz goddess.
Image from accessinterviews.com

In other news, the reading load remains relatively under control, I'm planning to start a reading journal to keep track of what I've actually been sifting through, and I'm starting to gather ideas together for assignments and dissertations. Myself and Becky F, the other crazy person taking Directed Readings in Syntax, have plans for a very exciting (read: geeky) project for the Spring term and, AND...I've just managed to quiz, buzz and somehow inveigle my way onto the University of York University Challenge team for 2012! As captain! Can I follow in the giNORMous footsteps of Trimble, Guttenplan and Chan (apologies to the Manchester captain who actually got it instead of Trimble, but...)? This remains to be seen, but Leonhardt, Virgo, Haines and Woods will give it a bloody good go. I wonder what kind of feedback we'll get from Paxman...?



Will those eyes be boring into us soon?
Image from Wikipedia



Assignments? What assign...ah. Those assignments.

York in November, mmm.
Photo by dvdbramhall

It's week 5, but no blues this far north of Cambridge, excepting the stunningly blue sky we were treated to on Sunday morning (is it wrong to be a little bit smug that only the North was treated to it?)

Instead, week 5 is yellow and pink; yellow for the colour that all the lecturers seem to use for printing assignment details on, and pink for the "declaration of academic integrity" cover sheet with which I shall be much more familiar by the end of reading week, which is next week.

In fact, one assignment is floating about in the print cloud now, waiting for my attention. Don't worry, I'm not being especially virtuous, it's due a little bit earlier than the others (tomorrow, in fact). This one is for Psycholinguistics, two "one-page" answers about the Motor Theory of speech perception vs. the auditory theories and also about Newness vs. length and Heavy-NP shift in double object constructions (my old friend...) The actual topics aren't too bad, firstly because I find them incredibly interesting, and secondly because we're not actually expected to do research outside of class notes/the reading pack, in this instance at least. However, the main point of the exercise is something I find MUCH more challenging...being concise. I'm sure it hasn't escaped your notice that I'm a several-line sentence sinner (if Dickens can get away with so can I....can't I?) so I'm finding it very difficult to condense lots of information into one lone A4 page. Especially as there's so much to say!

This same challenge is to be repeated in my Language Acquisition assignment, due a week today. The second section is basically a summary of a study and its main components, 500 words. OK, I can squish that down relatively comfortably. But the first section? Find data of first language acquisition in a language other than English and apply any of the theories we've studied so far to it. I've chosen French (partially because I can actually understand it), and already I can see that there's just so much to say! Carefully choosing which aspect to focus on may not be so bad, as I'll partially be constrained by the data that I can get my mitts on - but only having 500 words again?! Oh word count, you are a cruel, cruel mistress.

At least that's my only problem - I am once more thanking my lucky stars for everything I learnt last year in the library as I blithely play with Metalib. Some of my coursemates thought that this was some kind of communicable disease. This won't be the case after tomorrow, as our subject liaison librarian is giving over 2 hours of her time to drag us all out of the Google mire, but I'm quite pleased to have a mini-headstart on the data rush.

Anyway, what am I doing here? I have pages to print, data to mine and some very odd phonetic-type things to do...which aren't getting done here. To work!

(P.S. I managed to get some Lindy in last weekend, toddling off to Leeds to dance the Tranky Doo with some very pleasant lindyhoppers led by Cat Foley. I've never done lindy a la Scouse before, but it was very entertaining! And here's what we did...)

Sweet, sweet research

I had a mini-epiphany yesterday. In addition to having a generally very productive day, I was lucky enough to garner a few gems of wisdom which I think will prove invaluable over the next 4 years...and longer.

Research training: helping me to read clearly
Image by micsalac

We undertake research training with the indomitable Tamar Keren-Portnoy who, in conjunction with Eytan Zweig, kindly put on an extra hour of training to look a little closer at how to tackle academic papers.

I've read academic articles before, at undergraduate level and since coming to York, but I was beginning to wonder if I was being as efficient and productive as I could - and besides, the papers are getting exceedingly difficult! But with Tamar and Eytan on hand, I feel reassured, and here's what I learnt, if you were wondering:

• Don't imagine that you're going to understand absolutely everything you read. If you already knew everything, you wouldn't need teaching (and you probably wouldn't be human...) Try to pull out the bits that you can understand and find someone to discuss the other bits with.
• Look up unknown terms as you go along (in textbooks, dictionaries or online) - it's not like reading a foreign language, so pushing through will only cause more confusion in the long run.
• Use Google Scholar to find citations of the work you're reading - other scholars may have summarised or criticised the work previously (though be aware that they may have focused on a different aspect of it)
• After reading, try to summarise what you've read. If there are gaps in your summary, this should flag up the bits you need to go back to.

The raw material...from which a refined thesis will hopefully come!
Image from wikipedi

Between us, Eytan and I summarised (word of the moment) the transition from under- to postgraduate like this: at undergraduate level, you're given discrete blocks of knowledge like neat, refined cubes of white sugar with obvious edges. At postgraduate level, you're not just given the raw cane, you're given a whole field of raw canes which stretches as far as the eye can see. At least now, thanks to yesterday's session, I've sharpened my machete and I can get on with making my way through the field.

Finally, on a slightly different note, the importance of the arts and humanities get a boost in an inspiring piece by the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University, Sir Lescek Borysiewicz, (a medic himself), in which the Cambridge Bilingual Information Network (BIN-C) gets a worthy mention. I can but hope that the powers-that-be, and more importantly, arts students of the future, take notice.

What am I?

I have more tongues than any one person would know what to do with.

I draw lots and lots of trees.

I am just one of the many strings to Chomsky's bow.

I am a multidisciplinary area of knowledge which dabbles in both the Arts and Humanities, and in the Social Sciences.

And in the last lies a smidgin of a problem.

I (I'm now talking as myself, and not as my subject!) am incredibly lucky to have funding from the ESRC, that's the Economic and Social Research Council, which is the main funding body in the UK for the social sciences. And on Tuesday this week, I went down to my dear alma mater, the University of Sheffield, for my first ESRC event - the launch of the White Rose Social Sciences Doctoral Training Centre, the organisation which doles out the funding for Masters and PhD students like me, and for various projects and centres of excellence at the three Yorkshire universities involved (that's Leeds, Sheffield and York, if you were wondering). So far, so good. The event was intended to give us more information about what the WR DTC does (see above), and to talk about ways in which expertise, training and opportunities can be shared across the three institutions. All very admirable indeed. This kind of information, along with (a lot of) glowing examples of existing White Rose collaborative projects took up most of the morning. Not forgetting the glorious addition of a short session by Maria Mawson, Sheffield's social sciences liaison librarian whose suggested resources yielded an awful lot of useful stuff, as librarians' talks tend to. Her session probably was the most useful of the day.

Not a definition, but a defining image:
the wug test...on a mug!
Photo by ninasaurusrex

Indeed, it was the zenith that followed pretty rapidly by a deep, ravine-like nadir when we broke out for the discipline-related "cluster" sessions. Not for all the participants, and it wasn't really the fault of the organisers either, as such. The problem lay in the different ways that the three universities classify linguistics. York takes quite a scientific angle on it, emphasising the empirical and experimental side of things with specialisms in forensic speech science and psycholinguistics - hence why I am at York, and why they offer an ESRC 1+3 scholarship. I don't know about Leeds, but Sheffield seems to take a more artsy view generally, linguistics being all wrapped up with literature and offering lots of joint modules between the two. Both departments are fantastic, but the upshot of all this is that there were no linguists from Sheffield or Leeds, completely knocking out our networking and collaborative opportunities, which was such a shame. Of course, many people found the day to be incredibly useful - some friends of mine in the Politics stream reported some great shared experiences - and I found out that there's some very interesting research going on within Psychology, for example on language processing, so that will be an area to look into in the near future. But I can only hope that future events provide a little more in the way of networking and collaborative opportunities...and that there'll be some more social sciency linguists in Yorkshire in the future!

As a non-linguistic aside, I ran into the library marketing guru himself, Ned Potter a.k.a the Wikiman, in the Harry Fairhurst building (LFA) yesterday, and had a very enjoyable library-themed natter, my first in some time! It's now about six weeks since I left the Classics library and apart from missing Cambridge as a city, there are times when the dynamism of the Cambridge library mafia and the community feeling in Classics me manque, aussi. However, seeing as I'm virtually living in LFA now, library fixes will never be too far away.

Two weeks down (50 + 156 to go...)

October has passed me by almost completely, in a whirl of lectures, reading lists, journal articles, train tickets and, happily, a little lindy hop.

They did say it would be hard work...
Image by The Prudent Cyclist

Two weeks into my Masters, I'm very pleased to say that I'm enjoying what I'm doing so far. Some of it is a bit of revision (never a bad thing, especially after a year out) but there's a lot of new stuff in there too. I'm heartened by the fact that we're on the threshold of knowing more about the brain and how it does what it does, and I hope I can contribute to this new venture in the years to come. I'm finding that postgraduate study takes you from the realm of confirmed fact and certainties to the brink of real discovery - a little disconcerting, but very exciting indeed.

However, getting to grips with new theories and the latest research requires a LOT of reading - eye-crossing, mind-scrambling, fatigue-inducing amounts of reading. At time of writing, I am up to date with my reading...but give it a couple of days and a weekend in Richmond and I'll still be frantically trying to understand Cinque's 1990 account of Clitic Left Dislocation come Monday.

On the more pastoral side of things, I'm getting to know the campus and the city much better, and I'm settling into a kind of extended friendship group, thanks largely to the people I met at the York GSA's Meet a Housemate event as well as some very lovely people on my course. In fact, regarding the latter, I'd like to thank them for electing me as the MA representative for the department's Graduate School Board - I will do my best to represent them and their views as the year progresses. I've also taken up playing netball for my college, Wentworth...having not played for 8 (!) years, I was actually quite pleased with how I played at Goal Defence, my spectacular full-length face-plant across the goal third notwithstanding. Of course, we were still beaten by Vanbrugh 15-10, but they're all 18, so we win morally, I think.

Lindybombing the Festival of Ideas underneath the
Raised Faculty Building
Photo by Minh Hai Tran


In other news, CLX 2011 (that's the Cambridge Lindy Exchange, to the uninitiated) took the Sidgwick Site (and most of the rest of Cambridge) by storm last weekend. I particularly enjoyed the opportunity to see a lot of lindy hoppers, both those who are still Cambridge-based and other itinerants like me, not to mention about 12 hours worth of dancing. Cambridge itself is looking as stunning as ever this time of year (autumnal colours + 20 degree heat? Yes please!) and I have to add in an honorary mention for the East of England Ambulance Service, who came wonderfully to my aid on the Sunday morning (note to self: ask future dance partners if they've been eating Brazil nuts...)

Anyway. I should not be here, I should be at a desk getting my head down and attacking Cinque with highlighters. Poor man, he was only trying to clarify CLLD...

P.S. For a good read about PhD reading vs extreme procrastination, read here...

The eve of the beginning of the rest of my career

Hm, lots of prepositions in that title, but it's true! Lectures start with a vengeance on Monday (that's tomorrow, at 1.15pm, to be fair, no 7am alarm calls for me until Tuesday) and my MA in Psycholinguistics will be well underway.

So what have I been doing for the last week in York? Other than acclimatising to the dramatic drop in temperatures (which, to be fair, is mostly due to freakishly warm weather across Northern Europe in early October), I have been gradually finding my way around the compact yet confusing Heslington West (or main) campus - whoever designed the signposts needs a serious talking-to - and finding out what it has to offer in the way of resources and support for me and my fellow new postgrads at York.

Berrick Saul by night
Image by itspaulkelly

And the answer to that is: quite a lot, actually! A huuuuge amount of money has been invested in learning resources over the last few years and, fortunately, a sizeable portion of that has gone towards the arts and humanities. The most obvious use of this money can be found in the shape of the Berrick Saul building which houses the Humanities Resource Centre.

Can I hope for some of this on a
Thursday?!
Photo (and cake!) by the magnificent
Jo Bradley

It's a beautiful building (a rare thing on York's campus - sorry, but it's true!) with lots of bright, airy, silent* workspace for postgraduates only. We Masters students are allowed to "perch" at any free desk, whereas PhD students can apply to create a "nest" at a specific desk...we really are the Tweeting generation, it would seem. If that wasn't enough bird terminology, the HRC also has its very own Treehouse, a round, multipurpose space which is mainly intended for seminars, small conferences and receptions. It's not all about the building, however; the HRC is a hub for setting up and running reading groups, has its own blog and houses various research groups as well...and, as a further suggestion that librarianship is closer to the postgraduate lifestyle than it may seem, Cake Thursdays encourage people to get together away from their desks...I'm selfishly pleased to see that a lot of people have already volunteered to bake on Wednesday nights. I love eating...just not so keen on the baking myself. I'll bring the bottles :)

Right, less about cake. Of course, the HRC is not York's only offering. It's a little difficult to pass judgment on the JB Morrell Library and Harry Fairhurst Building just yet, as there is still a lot of construction work going on around the two. However, I have already found the library staff to be extremely helpful (I speak nothing but the truth, I'm not just sucking up to the wikiman and colleagues!), the Humanities Reading Room is a good space for silent work and I think that the Research Lounge** in the Harry Fairhurst could become the site of some very successful group work (and more than a few reviving cups of tea).

This is not to mention the labs in my department, the incredibly welcoming and friendly staff and the (fairly) secret e-lab, which looks like it will be useful for grabbing a networked-PC in hours of need. No, I'm not telling you where it is, because I'm that bad.***

In short, I have no shortage of places in which to read, think, write and generally attempt to get my head round everything that will be thrown at me this year. Now I just have to find out where everything ELSE on campus is (toilets, for example, seem to elude me!) and all will be well.

Not my nest, but a very comfortable looking-one indeed.
Image by CaptPiper

*Not so silent when the ultra environmentally-conscious windows decide to whirr shut.
**Next to the Research Hotel. I am yet to work out what this is, but I somewhat doubt it's the same as the wonderful Library Hotel...
***Only messing...I'll tell you for a cupcake.

The wanderer reappears...in North Yorkshire

No, the sublime Helen has not abandoned Cambridge (I'm the one guilty of that), but after a week and a half lying-in in Chester, four days sunbathing and seeing friends in Paris, and a lot of unexplained stressing, I am now settled in York and just starting off on my MA journey.

Another gratuitous baby elephant,
the trepidation of taking the plunge!
Photo by urbangarden

I'm no stranger to moving house (this is my 7th address in 7 years), and I had no compunction either in decamping to France, or in disappearing off to Cambridge alone on little more than a whim. So why did my move to York fill me with such trepidation? I knew the city a little and am enchanted by it, I had three very pleasant housemates in a very pleasant house waiting for me, and I had already had two very successful and encouraging meetings with my new supervisor, George.

There are a couple of explanations for my nervousness, which my fantastic family and friends helped me deal with. As superb bride-to-be Fliss explained, after 5 problem-free moves, I was due a little wobble! But she has faith in me, so why shouldn't I have faith in myself? My mum and dad listened to more than enough self-doubt and talked me through it and Julius is endlessly supportive too. Together, they all helped me realise that my main reason for being so scared was precisely because I know what I want to do now. My year at the Classical Faculty Library was a fantastic learning experience and an enjoyable first foray into the "real" working world with some excellent colleagues. But it was particularly useful in that it made me realise that postgraduate study and ultimately, a career in academia, was the route that I really wanted to pursue. Subconsciously I think that I've known this for some time, and so embarking upon the first step towards this career, not to mention the daunting task of getting back into studying and writing, was the real reason for my wobbles.

Me and my new housemates

And, just in case you were wondering, my first week in York has dispelled most of my fears; my housemates and the other new postgrads that I met at the GSA (Graduate Student Association)'s Meet a Housemate event are great fun, we're just getting going with departmental inductions and receptions and, like the well-behaved ex-librarian I am, I'm off on my tour of the JB Morrell library and other facilities later today.

It's early days yet but lectures start next week and I can't wait to get going.

Thing 23: The end of the beginning

The summer has gone away as quickly as it arrived, my time in Cambridge is coming to an end, and what better way to round it off than with a bit of reflection about our rerunning of the Cambridge 23 Things programme.

I have greatly enjoyed blogging on a regular basis; it has helped keep me writing and reflecting in my post-graduation period and I hope I will manage to keep it up during the years to come, even if the focus of the posts might shift a bit. 

My blog, in Wordle format! Created using http://www.wordle.net/

There is no doubt that a lot of the Things which I have learnt about in the programme will come in handy in the years to come, though admittedly, some will see greater use than others - I'm going to start my reflection with the less successful Things (but only so I can end on the good ones!)

Bottom of the class

• LibraryThing was an unmitigated disappointment for me. The design was poor, the interface complicated, and the results inaccurate at best. A great idea wasted, in my humble opinion.
• Google+. I know this wasn't a "Thing", but it popped up during the programme and again, promised so much but delivered...not a lot. It claimed to be "the" successor to Facebook and 101 other media tools but frankly (FB's new update and all), it really has to step up to compete with existing applications, not to mention taking a good hard look at its privacy policy...

by  rich115

My Cam23Things end of term report

Must try harder
(N.B. It's really me that should try harder, rather than the applications...)

• RSS feeds are a fantastic idea and I am using them in a small way via my Netvibes homepage. However, I am yet to find a reader/streaming program that really works for me, but I'm sure there is one out there.
• Evernote is a great resource, but I've yet to make it a real part of my online routine. Initially I used it for links, but Delicious overtook it. I have saved some images to it but I'd rather just keep them all in the "My Pictures" folder on my PC. I really like the idea and the design of Evernote but is it really useful to me? The jury's out.
• I need to get into the habit of using Creative Commons licensing tags because a) it's far more professional, b) provides more information for people who might see my reuse of stuff and c) it's an excellent idea that needs promoting! The problem is getting the formatting to match up to the picture, but once I get to grips with Ange's very useful workaround, I will develop better CC-tagging habits (see above for my first attempt!)

Gold stars all round

• Lightshot - lauded by all, so I won't bore you with any more hyperbole about the incredibly easy-to-use, superb, immensely useful and all-round Best App in the World Ever. 
• Prezi's popularity is attested to by its prominent position in the Wordle cloud above, which was unexpected...but then I really did enjoy all the neat tricks and formats it provides (to be used in moderation, of course)
• The Thing I use with the most regularity is probably Delicious - so much clearer than browser favourites and accessible from everywhere, it's simple but superb.
• I'm ready to hang my head in shame as I admit that Twitter is the second most used Thing that I have used in this programme. I only use it during work hours but as a medium for sharing professional information and engaging with others in the profession, it's unparallelled. I have also benefited from it in a personal capacity in terms of hearing about culturally exciting things (the Short Story Tweetathon, for one) and understanding certain issues better (mental illness, for example).
• Finally, all the amazing Cam23 bloggers, who have brought their own take on the Things offered and presented them in their individual and inimitable styles - it has been a privilege to read so many interesting things by interesting people that I had never heard of before.

On that note I'm going to finish with an homage to on of the other participants, my fabulously supportive boss Lyn, who has inspired me with her fantastic final post from last year's programme:

Blogging 'bout Things
Like a Doodle or two
Things
Like iGoogle for you
Things
(Things?) Like a Wordle cloud
Turn that podcast right up loud

Things that Flickr makes so pretty
Things that make a blog so witty
Screencasting for all the world to see
Though wikis may not be the Thing for me

Read about Things
On an RSS feed
Things
On Delicious to read
Things
Filed in Zotero
(Oh Oh) Reflecting on the Things you know

Things
Like the Lightshot feather
Things
That Link(ed) us In together
Twitter is the Thing we're talking through
And Facebook is one Thing we like to do.
(You can find Bobby Darin's somewhat more lyrical original "Things" here)

Thanks for the good times.

Becky :)

A glut of extra things (but lots of pretty pictures)

It's a bit of a last-minute rush, but I simply couldn't bear to leave all the pretty Extra Things undone before Cam23 is over for another year.

Starting with the prettiest of all the Extra Things, the data visualisation section has cheered up many of our blogs, as well as celebrating blogiversaries and even, crucially, promoting libraries!

I have used Wordle in the past and will be using it as part of my final post (*sob*) so I decided to give Tagxedo a go for this extra thing. I like Wordle very much but Tagxedo allowed me to produce this:

Although Tagxedo is a little less straightforward to use, it offers a much more simple way to shape your word clouds and create something perhaps more coherent with it. I chose a lightning bolt because the Cam23 programme has been full of little flashes of inspiration, as well as the occasional bolt from the blue! 

I was looking forward to Gliffy after seeing all the lovely floorplans that have popped up liberally across the Cam23 blogosphere. However, whilst I could try to recreate my lovely new terraced house in York, I've only spent about 15 minutes in it to date and therefore can't really remember what it's like. Instead I've decided to try something a little more serious with a Venn diagram about the overlap between librarianship and academia:

Created using www.gliffy.com

As a disclaimer, it is, necessarily a bit of a generalization on both sides. It's actually quite a difficult topic to expand upon though, because there are so many almost-correlations, and a lot of myths on both sides. I used this helpful post by Betsy and a careers case-study to help, not to mention sending my Classics colleagues into a right old debate in the office - so I hope that you agree with some of my ideas, and if you disagree with other, please let me know why and we can carry the debate on here!

Back to data visualisation for the moment - what better way to promote your library/webpage/blog/links than with a personalised QR code? The codes in themselves are a very clever marketing ploy (as long as your target audience is smartphone-savvy!) but are eeeeven cooler if they reflect the product (for want of a better  word) as well. Something along these lines, perhaps...

Created at http://vanity-qrcode.com/

Shameless, shameless (and in this context, slightly pointless) self-promotion.

What's left for this whistlestop tour? I blogged about list-making software and, naturally, tried out all the ones that I blogged about. In fact, some of my opinions are pretty thinly veiled in the Cam23 thing post here. My favourite was TeuxDeux, and I'm pleased to report that it has been successful...at the other end of the office, where Lyn raves about it! But me, I'm devoted to my scrappy bits of paper and notes stuck to the computer monitor - call me a luddite, but there's something very satisfying about tearing up a completed task, altering an ongoing one, or doodling all around the job you're putting off (as opposed to on Teux Deux, where your outstanding tasks chase you from day to day!)

Another very pretty Thing (or couple of Things) is the Tumblr/Posterous brand of short blogging. I haven't used either of these programs but I can definitely see the usefulness of them. I think the kinds of images and quotes I like to share are a little too random and unfocused to warrant a whole Tumblr page, for instance, and so I tend to share them as individual weird ideas on Facebook or Twitter (this was today's offering, which really made me smile!) I find that Facebook also allows me to discuss such things with friends more easily, because of the extended contacts that I have built up over 5 years (!) of using it and because it is an accepted (maybe expected?) way in which my friends and I utilise the Facebook News Feed. However, I think this site is a brilliant use of the software (even if the premise itself confuses me a little) so if I had a coherent and clearly defined point to make, I would definitely look to these kinds of tools.

And finally, I cannot forget Dropbox from weeks and weeks ago - I have an account because a friend sent me some large files using it some time ago. I must admit that it worked very well on that occasion...and that I haven't used it since. Photos I send via email, documents I share using Google Docs, resources I have posted up on Wikis...these all seem like perfectly viable ways of working, so for the moment, Dropbox is a bit redundant. Never say never though.

Thing 21: The End(note) is near at the close of this (Zot)ero...er, era...

Er...not sure that one's going to hold up, my friend...
Image by Papertrix

Cam23 2.0 is coming to an end and so is my traineeship...so it seems incredibly apt to focus on what happens at the end of a long effort...in academia, that's usually the dreaded bibliography. It seems so simple but the perils and the pitfalls are many; one too many sloppy references and you're headed for a plagiarism charge, so it makes sense to spend your time ensuring that everything is as perfectly referenced as possible.

But how do you get to that point? And why should you take all that time when, really, it's not necessary? I actually used to enjoy compiling my bibliography as an undergraduate (Gareth, you're not alone...) - I've always found formulaic things relaxing, but of course I was really just procrastinating, and I still managed to get some of the punctuation or the formatting wrong. Besides, the accuracy was dependent on my keeping good notes on everything I'd read, and the bibliographies that I'll be producing in York will be considerably longer than my undergrad efforts.

Is this how time will seem, as my postgraduate years stretch out
before me? Image by Darren Tunnicliff

Luckily, there are quite a few different options out there to help ensure that your bibliography is relatively stress-free. I'm not going to look at Mendeley, though I've heard good things about it; instead I'm going for two extremes - the intuitively easy Zotero, and the ridiculously complicated Endnote. I define them based on the ease with which I was taught how to use each program; Zotero took around 15 minutes with an excellently prepared session by Catherine at FAMES, versus a two hour session at Computing services accompanied by 40-odd pages of notes for Endnote. It seems ridiculous when the end result is virtually the same, plus Zotero is free, PLUS it is accessible from anywhere. Endnote is developing its "web" arm but the registration process is onerous. In all honesty, I'm fairly sure that I've forgotten most of what I learnt already...apart from the fact that the one thing that was incredibly easy to do in Endnote was deleting everything you'd been working on. And this is how they must be judged - the main advantage of reference management software is the time-saving aspect, and if the software is so unwieldy, complicated and linked to one lone PC, then I might as well have done it myself and got my geeky kicks at the same time.

Thing 17: Casting a Pod into the wide, wide sea of information

I was hoping to present something a little more exciting for this Thing by actually creating a podcast, but sadly staff shortages and the training duties that have come with a new trainee have put paid to that, and my attempt at a podcast remains at 4 short, quiet clips of a croaky-voiced and unusually posh (posher that normal, anyway) me, chatting away about how many books we have in the Classics library (around 68,000 items in total, don'tcha know).

Not the same kind of shuffle, but
entertaining nonetheless.
Photo by The Loopweaver

My own podcasting aspirations may have to wait, but in fact I used to be quite a prolific consumer of podcasts, of the audio variety anyway. I don't download and listen to them on a regular basis, as I tend to be a reader more than a listener when it comes to news, and an iPod shuffle isn't conductive to coherent listening.

However, in my final year at Sheffield, podcasts came in very handy in the entrancingly entitled Transcription, Translation and Subtitling module (no prizes for guessing the four-lettered shorthand name for that one). The aim of the game, once in January and once in June, was to transcribe a short French video clip (usually a news report) and translate the result into coherent subtitles. There were lots of conventions : two lines per 5-6 seconds, absolutely no more than 39 characters per line, two hyphens for new speakers, et cetera et cetera ad nauseam. But before you could dream of this stage, you had to turn what you could hear into coherent and competent French. Bearing in mind that this is a language which has twenty spellings for every vowel sounds, this is easier said than done (literally), but podcasts were invaluable for practising picking up on all those pesky sounds that get swallowed away in normal speech. My podcast of choice was "Savoir être" from France Info, "the psychology of daily life", apparently. My parenting skills improved as I listened to half of France's daily troubles, but the firsts I received in each exam were testament to the effect of the podcasts on my language skills. Podcasts were also used in Sheffield as accompaniments to lectures, and in one Linguistics module, a method of assessment.

Are you listening?
Photo by McBeths Photography

Podcasts, unsurprisingly, appeal in particular to those who learn through listening, and it is important to cater to all types of learners in libraries and in academia in general, not to mention making use of all the technology available to us, including mp3 players. For this reason, I am looking forward to becoming more au fait with the software and the conventions, until maybe I too can present an inaugural lecture as a podcast, like Paul Cartledge did here. Of course, by that point, technology will have taken another leap lightyears into the future...

Thing 22: Wikis get on my wick(i)

I know, I know - my method of following the oh-so-carefully organised and logical steps of the Cam23 2.0 programme has gone from a little bit sporadic to completely haywire, but as I encounted a wiki of mine today, it is perfectly logical for me to head straight to Thing 22 (in my head, anyway...)

A "petite pachyderm"
Photo by John Carleton

Aside from the glorious glut of garbled knowledge that is Wikipedia, which I myself have never contributed to, my experience of wikis pre-Cambridge was nil. Then I arrived here and was slapped with the mammoth task of scanning endless articles and chapters for our (spoilt) classicists' reading lists and putting them onto our VLE, Camtools - a pachyderm-esque piece of software if there ever was one. I dutifully scanned and tweaked and uploaded to Camtools, at which point I discovered ...

...the Wiki.

Dramatic, I know. All Camtools pages have a wiki option, which wasn't being used at all by the Classics library, and I thought it might be a slightly more interesting and friendly way to make all these scanned resources available to the students. Here was the result:

My attempt at a Classics resources wiki page

It's not great, but it's not horrendous either. I wanted all the icons alongside each other, but the software, combined with my limited HTML knowledge at the time, conspired against me.

Lots and lots of reading for the
finalists!

But it was at least a good excuse to break up the white space with Raphael's version of Plato and Aristotle in his Scuola di Atene (if you haven't been to the Vatican to see it, it's well worth it). The pictures relate to some of the core courses in each year, and the link underneath brings up a list of (linked) resources, arranged by course. 

The full Scuola di Atene, if you
were wondering...
Image (appropriately) from Wikipedia

As Suz points out in her blogpost on this subject, it's a little clunky, and I certainly wouldn't choose a wiki to do anything more sophisticated than bung up a load of documents, but for that precise purpose, it's actually pretty useful...as long as you accept its limitations!

Thing 18: Cam23 2.0 - useful stuff in abundance

A stunning reflection on
Indianapolis Central Library.
Photo by Serge Melki

A little late maybe, but there's a lot to reflect upon. In fact, I think there's more to think about this week than last time, as this second block of 'Things' has seen me try a lot more new stuff than in the first.

The most useful Thing so far has to be Delicious. As I said at the time, I was dubious as to how useful it would be, considering the implicit panning it took in the first Cam23 programme, but it has turned out to be a gem. At work I move between three different computers, and of course my laptop at home makes 4, and being able to access all the interesting stuff I've come across in any of those 4 places is a boon. The tagging system took a while to get used to, in terms of the punctuation and in terms of working out the most efficient naming method for my purposes, but it's now doing exactly what I want it to do, with little added things popping up all the time, for example the ability to make notes on bookmarks for future references.

Transcribing poorly-handwritten Greek. All in day's work for
a librarian.
Photo by lemurph, manuscript at Trinity Hall, Cantab.

The other Thing seeing more use than I could have imagined is Twitter. I only use it at work, as the vast majority of tweets that come through relate to libraries (with the odd whimsical aside to keep me smiling during the long vac!), but it's already proved its worth : lots of people helped me with my research for this week's list-making app post, and a Twitter plea from lemurph about a strange Greek character* was answered using yfrog, a JRF and an Honorary Citizen of Sparta (who happened to be knocking about the library at the time).

It's not over just yet though. I have only just embarked on my Prezi journey but I can definitely see legs on that one, I've yet to perfect either of the reference management tools that we're looking at this week, and whilst I'm greatly enjoying Cam23 2.0, I will be putting in the effort after the programme has finished to try and continue to blog solo...I hope I can manage that!

*Character in the orthographic, rather than idiosyncratic person sense, of course. And if you're at all interested, it was a quote from Galen taking a dig at "the followers of Moses and Christ". Nothing to do with a moose's upper echelons at all, Helen and Katie...

Thing 19: Slides for Sharing

*This is was scheduled to appear sometime last week...I'm not sure how it slipped under the net, but here it is anyway...*

Yet another Thing that has only come to my attention since being in Cambridge, and which is so eminently sensible, I'm surprised it didn't crop up before.
I don't yet have an account, but here's an example of how I've been vaguely involved in its use in libraries - librarian extraordinaire Annie posted this just after our presentation at the Libraries@Cambridge conference 2011: Libraries@Cambridge 2011 - Graduate Trainees' presentation

View more presentations from Annie Johnson

The only thing I would have maybe added to this was to attach the appropriate part of the script to each slide, but it's still useful for non-attendees (and nice for our own nostalgia) to able to reaccess the slides so easily, wherever we are and whichever computer we might be using. Bless the cloud, eh.

There are many other librarians, superb advocates in particular, who make use of Slideshare to continue to share their excellent points with those who maybe couldn't make it to the original presentation. As far as I can tell, you can't yet put Prezis on Slideshare, which is a shame, but maybe this will come in the future.

I can very much see the use of Slideshare in my future career too. I intend to get involved with presenting papers as soon as possible, so it will be useful to have a record not only for the reasons detailed above, but also to form part of my online CV and presence, for anyone who's interested! It would also be very useful for teaching, as any delinquent, lecture-skipping students can get the slides any time, as well as those dedicated ones! It's also far more eco-friendly than printing out the slides on handouts every time.

All in all, a great tool which I may not have made much use of yet, but I certainly will in the future.

Thing 20: Prezis...and it's not even my birthday!

I was so interested in this Thing that I'd actually made my very first Prezi just last week (I might not yet have caught up with myself, but I'm also ahead of myself...does that make me Doctor Who?) It took a bit longer than the average .ppt would to put together, but to be fair, I'd never used it before! I was a good little librarian this time, taking my time to watch all the "how to" prezis, and the software, which is not exactly intuitive, does become easier to use the longer you play.

Gratuitous picture of the supremely gorgeous Tenth Doctor,
à la Library Wanderer. He would have been a Prezi user, too.
Photo from Needless Things blog

So without more ado, here is my very first effort, on the stunningly exciting topic of the in-house classification system we use at Classics:

Classical Faculty Library: Classification System on Prezi

I hope you enjoyed that! I loved being able to mess around with the bookshelves, and zooming around to different bits of the library to illustrate how it's all divided up. The presentation which really inspired me was this incredibly creative effort by Ned Potter, which also happened to be the first Prezi I'd ever seen, at the CILIP New Professionals Day in October 2010. Watch and learn...

Everything you need to know about technology and working in libraries on Prezi
Thanks to theREALwikiman for letting me pass it on!

However, there are a couple of issues with Prezi. As the lovely Andrew pointed out, I think it's important sometimes to rein yourself in because, just like a glut of .ppt effects which leave the audience cold, it's possible to make them feel seasick with Prezi if you go overboard on the zooming.

Also, as Prezi is still developing as a product, there's a few things that it doesn't deal with very well yet. It's more-than-a-bit-of-a-faff trying to attach sound to Prezis (watch this space...) at present, but hopefully they'll find a way to incorporate the common types of sound file into the software soon.

Overall, I'm quite a fan! I won't cast off all allegiance to .ppt, as its simplicity is still a virtue when it's used properly, but there's something fun about Prezi without being too frivolous, and who wouldn't want a little more fun in some of the meetings and conferences we all have to go to?

Extra thing, Week 9: Common creativity

I'm skipping podcasting for the moment (I'm cooking up a little something though, hopefully it'll be worth the wait!), so for the time being there will be a few more pretty pictures and a bit of serious discussion, as I tackle Creative Commons licensing.  

Share and share alike...
Image by  Richard Masoner / Cyclelicious

The whole idea of a creative commons license, brought about by a non-profit organisation founded in 2001, is a spectacularly good one. As individuals we can bring a lot of different skills to the collective (now usually web-based) table - for example, you might be a whiz with words but poor with pictures, so you might find it difficult to beautify your product, be it a blog or a book, and get it noticed. What's more, a lot of us don't have the money or the inclination to fork out for royalties and access to copyrighted material. Luckily, the more artistically-challenged of us now have a vast array of striking images at our fingertips, thanks to some talented people with an open, giving personality. Such as the cyclist photographer who snapped this sign, which I think wouldn't go amiss in Cambridge! (On the subject of images though, I inserted both of these using imagecodr - a cracking idea but the formatting seems to go haywire if I want to centre or move the image around...any suggestions?)

Of course, pictures are only the tip of the iceberg. The Creative Commons infrastructure is used by some huge names, such as Al Jazeera TV, rock band Nine Inch Nails and famously, the Public Library of Science (PLoS) group of journals. I can understand that some artists/creators would want to jealously guard their work, as it is their livelihood, but Nine Inch Nails proved that you can share content and still make money, as they simply legislated for what their fans were probably doing anyway, and in so doing won a lot of respect from music fans everywhere, which bore fruit when their next tour was a massive sellout.

A little more sharing
Image by by  Duncan~ 

Of course, that is but one example. A more pertinent one for libraries is the set-up at PLoS. I went to one of the Arcadia seminars in the winter about open source publishing (see "Reengineering the scholarly journal" here), some of which was laudable (sharing databases of results and disseminating vital scientific research as quickly as possible) and other aspects of which were a bit worrying (cutting out the human element of the review system and publishing articles before they've been vetted at all). However the creative commons license deals with and facilitates the rapid dissemination of results and research, which is crucial in our community, where new diseases and issues can spread across the world within weeks and need to be targeted as quickly as possible. So socially it's great, but even better, it doesn't harm the authors of the content; they don't generally receive much (if anything) for writing the article at all, but transmission of their name and reputation worldwide is critical, as academic salaries often depend on that oh-so-difficult-to-define phenomenon, "wider impact".

All in all, I think we can agree that the CC idea is A Good Thing for content-makers and content-users of all shapes and sizes.