March 21, 2006
China Reflections: Jet lag is kicking my arse
My flight finally landed in Boston's Logan Airport at about 7:30a EST this morning, after a 1.25 hour delay last night in San Francisco (due to plane unavailability, and the flurry of passenger reassignments from a cancelled American Airlined flight earlier in the day). Despite the fact that I took a Unisom with a perfect vanilla milkshake that really hit the spot, and sleeping through the whole flight, I'm entirely too tired.
I had plans for today. Stay awake to write posts and Flickr photos and check email. Fight jetlag with every fiber of my being. Reset my circadian clock to sleep at night and be refreshed to head to PLA at the Hynes bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the AM. Alas, I have been defeated, and slept quite a bit today. I s'pose the 13 hour flight from Hong Kong to SFO didn't help that much, either.
I'll see what I can get up on the blog and the photostream, but whatever I don't post from my China trip tonight will have to wait until after PLA, since I don't want to futz with both at the same time. This might be considered cheating, but I'm going to date the posts for their actually date of occurence, so that they will appear in the proper order in the archive.
Many thanks to Steve at See Also, host of the most recent Carnival of Infosciences, for the pointer!
6:19 PM | Permalink
March 20, 2006
China Day 8: Heading home
Sorry to be so out-of-touch for so many days. While access was available in the Business Centre of the Horizon Hotel in Kunming, the schedule was aggressively busy and exhausting, so I've decided to try to post the rest of my notes between today, tomorrow, and next week (you know, after PLA).
I have once again accepted the generous invitation of my friend Colby's parents, Brian and Martha, to wait out my layover in their home in Hillsborough (about 10 mins away from SFO). I tried to fly standby to catch an earlier flight, but due to another cancelled flight this morning getting home today will be impossible, so I'll be heading home on my original red-eye flight to Boston this evening.
Just as well, it'll be interesting to contribute to the Flickr annual "Day in the life of..." (DILO) event, documenting my travel home (while I may not participate in the consensed-upon-yet-optional theme, it'll still be interesting).
I'm slowly catching up on email, so bear with me if you don't hear from me for a few days. And if you'll be at PLA and want to catch up, let me know.
6:45 PM | Permalink
March 17, 2006
China Day 5: Yunnan University Library
The library here at Yunnan University is the oldest academic library in Yunnan province, founded in 1923. The collection houses 100,000,000 items in Chinese and other languages, 16,200 volumes of ancient docments, and 600,000 periodicals. In 1993, the library automation network was established, and they have access to many Chinese and other information databases, freely available to faculty, and students on campus and via remote access. They are also open to everyone in the city of Kunming, but there is a charge to non-students.
They also have a multifunction reading room containing 112 multimedia networked computers, as well as free wifi, as you all now know ;). A new campus library is currently under construction and should be finished by this August.
After the introductory remarks, one of our delegates gave a presentation on information literacy in academic libraries, with emphasis on knowing your audience and how your patrons best learn, and tailoring information literacy and bibliographic instruction lessons to meet the needs of your constituency. This includes using technology (or not), depending on how people learn best.
Another delegate made a presentation of a the ALA Intellectual Freedom Manual, and made an excellent presentation of how important intellectual freedom is to the basis of the information economy, and how librarians are essential to the development progressive society (I have more comments on this that I'll post later). Since Dr. Chao, the president of the university, made mention of how the university wishes to better embrace the information economy, this presentation was quite appropriate and helpful, and not at all political, making it comfortable for everyone.
As it turns out, American and Chinese academic libraries have many of the same issues. Chinese libraries are moving towards implementing more technology rather than hiring more librarians, and when hiring, they prefer to hire part-time instead of full-time librarians. Bringing students into the library is also an issue, although it seems that the relationship building between students and librarians in China is more aggressive. One Chinese librarian mentioned that in addition to providing phone, email, BI sessions in classes, and in-person support, librarians have given students personal cell phone numbers so that they can call for help whether they are here at school, at home during break (many students are from other provinces), or even travelling abroad.
Despite this relationship building, it is still difficult to bring in students. Delegates have shared stories of how adding coffee shops to libraries, making friends with professors which lead to better professional relationships and collaboration, and faculty professional development days where library services are highlighted have helped a great deal to inform faculty and staff of available resources.
In China, library and information science is an undergraduate program, although there are masters and doctoral programs as well. It seems that they approach library science from the opposite direction we do academically, where in America librarians either come to librarianship as a second career, or after another masters, so a big question was how American libraries train reference librarians to maximize service quality in a minimum period of time when serving such a broad range of academic needs. As librarians know, training reference librarians isn't a descrete task, it's more of an art cultivated over time through experience. Academic libraries often require a masters in a specialization, but otherwise, there isn't anything formal. We shared our experiences with on-the-job training, self study, mentorship training, and classes through consortia. I think I would have added learning from each other through conferences, networking, and pre-conference training sessions, but there wasn't enough time.
As with Beijing Normal University Library, we're finding more and more that at least the academic libraries in American and in China have many similar service issues. We haven't talked about technology and integration issues as much as I'd like (RFID came up at the end of this meeting, which is totally not enough time to discuss something as controversial and multifaceted).
Off to lunch, then to the provincial library.
11:49 AM | Permalink
China Day 4 (and 5ish): Beijing to Kunming, Yunnan University Library
I'm currently sitting in a meeting in the Yunan University Library in Kunming, the capital of the Yunnan province where we'll spend the remainder of our trip. Just for kicks, I enabled the wifi on Carol's laptop to see if I could get a connection, and I did, so I'm taking this quick opportunity to post. Perhaps I can post a quick summary of this current meeting before we leave the library. Go go gadget free university wifi!
The delegation hopped a 3-hour flight from Beijing to Kunming yesterday morning. We were finally settled into our hotel around 3:30P or so, then spent some time walking around Kunming before dinner at a local famous restaurant.
Kunming is *beautiful*. There just aren't enough words to describe it. Even just sitting in a conference room at Yunnan University Library, warm, spring sunlight streams through a wall of windows, and you can see the green grass, budding trees, and beautiful flowers everywhere. I'm jealous of the students and staff here!
We have 2 professional meetings today, the current one at Yunnan University Library, and an afternoon meeting at Yunnan Provincial Library, which is the local version of a public library.
Back to the meeting...
10:30 AM | Permalink
March 15, 2006
China Day 3: Cultural Day Fun at the Forbidden City
This morning our delegation headed out for a cultural program day at about 8:00am, with our first stop at the Forbidden City in the exact center of Beijing.
As we walked through parts of the city selected by our National Guide Tony (the whole complex is gigantic, and would take days to explore fully), he offered us many great nuggets of historical and architectural information. He even recommended From Emperor to Citizen: The Autobiography of Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi as further reading about the last emperor of China, and an interesting read on the history of China.
As topics came and went, I found myself thinking of the many content-based items I'd consumed in the past that related to Chinese culture and history, as well as the Forbidden City. Here's the quick list I came up with:
* The Last Emporer: A biographical account of the last emporer of China, Puyi. He lived there, you know. ;)
* Raise the Red Lantern: As we walked through the courtyard of the concubines' rooms, Tony spoke of how concumbines were in a constant war and competition with each other for the favors of one master, the emporer. While not nearly the same time period as the reign of the last emporer, Raise the Red Lantern is still a decent fictional account of how crazy concubine life was.
* Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: The Empress Dowager was the single most powerful woman in China for about 48 years, recruiting one child emporer after another as puppets to allow her to rule the country. Women didn't normally have such power, and in a completely blatent and ineffective effort at making her influence less obvious, she set up a screen that hung between her and the baby emporers to give the illusion that she wasn't there. Despite her influence, she was limited in her power. Men constantly tried to put women in their place, and one way to limit women's power and influence was to bind their feet. Long story long, this book is a fictional story centered around foot binding for women in China.
7:43 AM | Permalink
March 14, 2006
China Day 2: Peking duck dinner
They really know how to feed people in China. All of our meals have been huge, and the food has been absolutely fabulous. We even ate some unique things this evening, including snake roe, bamboo, and some other neat stuff...
9:33 PM | Permalink
China Day 2: Photos of the Beijing Normal University Library
After yet another huge lunch, we hit the library on campus. I'll post my notes on that meeting later, but for now, enjoy some of the photos I took there.
9:12 PM | Permalink
China Day 2: College of Information Science and Technology, Beijing Normal University
Many thanks to Caro Brey-Casiano for the use of her laptop in helping me continue to blog my experience here in China. I'm able to type notes in the meetings, and some things on the bus, which is causing a little motion sickness for me, but it's helping me keep up with the fast pace of our itinerary.
We spent the day Tuesday at the Beijing Normal University, which is also known as the Beijing Teachers University, since the specialization of the university is education, and our National Guides tell us it is one of the very best in China. Our first professional meeting of the day on Tuesday was to visit with the Professor Song and some of his students at the College of Information Science and Technology. This department once housed the Information Management major, which was also part of the library science course of study, but Professor Song explained that major has been moved over to the education and research school, while computer science and technolgoy and electronic enginnering majors remain in his department.
There are 60 faculty memebers, 400 undergraduates, and 200 post-graduates in his college, which comprises 6 major research subjects, including:
* Digital collections and museums
* Language information processing
* Space and geology systems
* Collaborations with the psychology department in the research of human recognition capabilities
* Computer hardware research
Prof. Song's specialization is how to digtize ancient antique books and building comprehensive databases to house the information. He also works in online distance education, including an excellent online program to teach Chinese to foreigners.
Our conversations this morning included many areas, but tended to focus on technology, resource sharing and management, and digital classification. I'll highlight some of the discussion here, but I'll be saving the really interesting but slightly complex discussion bits for when I get home.
How does one study become to a librarian? What education does it require?
One of Prof. Song's students explained that everyone in China who wants to go to college needs to pass a college entrance exam, but once in college, the information management major is common in most Chinese universities, with two specific concentrations: library management and management of information systems.
Currently she's seeking employment [like many librarians here in the states], and although she has attended job fairs seeking positions at various levels of library service, it seems that employers are preferring computer science majors to information management professionals, so there seems to be no profession-wide preference towards "professionals" in China.
Even when she was an undergraduate (she is now in post-doctoral study), while her program is like many others in requiring field work for the degree, few libraries are certified to allow students to do this kind of work study for credit (not for money), and the field work study period is much shorter than other programs to try to accomodate all of the students who need field work towards their degree. She could get a regular paying job in a library as a student, but those jobs are not reserved for library school students, anyone can work there.
Children's librarianship is a specialty in the US. Is there a specialization for children's librarianship in their program?
Prof. Song explained that no such specialization exists in the library management program, but that it may be included in the school of early education, instead.
How long is the program of study to become a librarian?
Library management is typically a 4-year undergraduate program.
Carol also extended an opportunity to Prof. Song and his group to ask questions.
From what Prof. Song knows of the US, university libraries have comprehensive collections, and are able to share those collection through the networking of catalogs and other online resource sharing, which is something he would like to do more, and know more about.
Carol began by explaining that the information sharing and system networking is not limited to university libraries. Many states have databases that are shared between many types of libraries, and there is widespread information sharing nationwide, through many different methods. This led into an extensive discussion of cataloging, metadata, and database management that I want to save for better treatment later.
Prof. Song then invited us to ask him and his group more questions.
In the US and Canada, public libraries are more than just information centers, but also community centers. How are future librarians in China trained in the sensitivity, philosophy, and skills to manage public libraries in these other [human interaction] aspects of the library?
Although the school emphasizes technology, technology is only a tool used to serve people, not the end goal. The goal of the program is to develop systematic and reasoning logic, the kind of thinking that will enable them to utilize the technology better to help patrons, and to continue to learn and grow over the course of their lifetimes, and not just to stick with what they learned in school and in textbooks.
For instance, the student who spoke earlier who is looking for a job, is such a great student that he's recommending her to the doctoral program, not just because of her skill and grades, but also because she's a great person, she meets the standard of personality for excellent public service.
Can you tell us more about the students who have accompanied you to the meeting today?
All three of the students are working in digitizing materials.
The first student, the woman who spoke about looking for a job, is working on digitizing an 1,800 year old dictionary, the first dictionary in the world, based in chinese characters. That work alone can be classified as a major! She is also working on a semantic system that analyzes the rules of how chinese characters are assembled from their smaller parts, in order to possibly find a way to digitally translate from Chinese to other languages.
The second student is working on digitizing copies of ancient tablets rubbings. He's working on a set of ancient temple rubbings, which will become a whole religious book.
The third student is working on machine translation of ancient chinese, which is very different from the simplified Chinese, into modern chinese.
While digitizing ancient texts is a priority, is there a movement to also preserve oral tradition in China? In an age of ever-changing storage technology, how do you decide which media to use?
Prof. Song is currently doing some work in this area. China has a rich heritage of legends, ancient love stories, and history that the people who work in the discipline of folk art and history are applying to Chinese government to make the oral history a non-physical heritage of the nation.
He's working on using a computer as a visible tool to enable access to the oral history materials [it sounds a lot like a kiosk or workstation concept].
In terms of media storage selection, because they need to act fast in order to preserve these materials before they disappear, the priority is to record the stories, transcribe them into a print record, and digitize them as soon as possible, doing the best they can with the best they have right now. There is no way of knowing what new technologies will emerge, so he is certain that this is the best way to preserve the oral traditions right now.
What distance education services are offered by his college, and how are the libraries involved?
Prof. Song explained that only 90,000,000 Chinese people have access to the internet (less than 1/13 of the population), and in many remote areas, building the technology resources is a challenge. Even with minimal technology resource, many rural citizens don't have time to learn, and less than 19% have access to college education. The Chinese government is paying more attention to the educational needs of the rural population, especially in extensive funding to educate farmers in agricultural technology. The government uses TV and radio programs to teach these programs right now, and at some point the university also wants to get involved in using the same avenues to extend distance education resources.
While our discussion was an hour and a half long, it really feels like we just scratched the surface. It's hard to further condense everything from the meeting, and while I could pick and choose what to highlight, everything we talk about is incredibly interesting and exciting, so it's a shame to weed anything out.
8:58 PM | Permalink
China Day 2: American blogger in China
As we headed out to the bus Tuesday morning, Jen picked up a copy of the China Daily from the concierge. Interestingly enough, this story graced the front page:
Reports of blogs' death were greatly exaggerated
[China Daily 14 mar '06]
March 8 was International Women's Day, but for Wang Xiaofeng it might as well have been April Fool's Day.
On that day, the senior writer for Beijing-based Sanlian Life Weekly shut down his popular blog, as did Yuan Lei, an entertainment reporter for Guangzhou-based Southern Weekend.
Carol Brey-Casiano, the leader of our delegation, announced in our briefing that I was blogging the trip, and since then I've had a flurry of questions about it. Blogging in an environment where blogging is not as normal as, say, blogging a conference like Computers in Libraries, is interesting, since it has an element of novelty here.
Anyway, the article. So it turns out that later Leonard, one of our National Guides, was noticing me typing away and complimented me on my speed. We got to talking about my blogging experience, and how that really has made me even lighter in the fingers. He then shared with the the Chinese word for blog and blogger (apparently they are the same): boke, pronounced BwO ker (capital letters emphasizing the syllable, but the w is lowercase because it's really a little, light w sound). So, while "woo shee me gwoyen" (I'm going phoenetic in spelling here) is "I am an American," "woo shee me bwoker" is "I am a blogger."
"Boke" is apparently a very, very new word in Chinese, which Leonard learned from his 15-year old son. He kept hearing his son say it, and he had to stop him and ask what it meant.
As we walked out to the bus, Leonard explained that there aren't really many famous bloggers in China, but there are two in particular, a television personality and a journalist, and I mentioned the story in the paper. Lo and behold, the blogs from the story were from the two very famous bloggers in China, playing a prank on the foreign media for all their hype of the allegedly political nature of all blogs in China. Interesting that the famous bloggers here are not very political at all (or, at least they keep saying that to foreign media, but no one believes them), while the bloggers famous in America are indeed the blogs taken down for political content.
It's all about cultural perspective.
2:02 PM | Permalink
China Day 2: Cultural bathroom exchange
Bathrooms are interesting in China in general. If you've traveled in Asia before (I haven't, but I've done research for the someday trip to Japan), you know that many public restrooms have squat toilets. While our National Leaders purposely chose restaurants that have Western toilets for us, we are often seeking out restrooms, since our intake of water, tea, and other beverages is pretty steady between large meals and professional meetings.
Things move fast on this trip, and the schedule is tight. We tend to try to queue up for the restroom before leaving the hotel, and just after every meal, since we're assured Western toilets that way. With all the water we drink to stay hydrated, and all the beverages we drink in our professional meetings, the lines are often long. Tuesday morning's bathroom trip was particularly interesting for me.
Before I continue, I need to give Jennie Pu props for calling this one. She totally knew this would happen to me in China, but I didn't believe her.
On our way out of the hotel, I stopped at a public restroom in the hotel (with Western-style toilets), muffin from the buffet in hand for the bus. While my travel partner Jen used the facilities, I stood outside the stalls, munching, waiting for Jen so that she could hold my muffin when it was my turn.
There were two ladies cleaning the bathroom while we were in there, and one of them started talking to me in Chinese, starting with "Ni hao" (which means hello), and continuing on in Chinese for a short sentence. I responded "Ni hao" out of habit, and she began to talk to me in Chinese. In a deer-in-headlights moment, I couldn't remember how to say "I don't understand," and I decided that saying, "I'm American" would sound like a stupid gwailo thing to say. So, mouth full of muffin, I simply said, "Tui bu xi" in Chinese (I'm not sure if I'm spelling it right, but it means "excuse me"), covering my mouth, since I was after all eating in the bathroom.
She kept talking to me in Chinese. I wasn't sure what to do. I said, "I don't understand" in English, and gave a little shrug with my head to the side a bit. She didn't seem phased, but she did say something to the other cleaning lady, who then asked me a question (there was a "ma" in there somewhere near the end, so I assumed it was a question). I told her the same thing.
So the first cleaning lady goes outside, asks an invisible person a question, and I hear from outside the bathroom, "Oh, American, American," as though she was trying to commit it to memory. She came back in, and said, "American" to me, but trailed off into another Chinese sentence. She did that a few times, but each sentence after sounded different. So, I showed her my name tag (we're supposed to wear our People to People name badges all the time), and she responded, "American, American." She said something to the other cleaning lady, who said something to her, then to me, then to her.
Our first lady then says something in Chinese, pointing at her face, then mine, then hers again, then mine, then the white paper towels, laughing. It's obvious that she didn't think I was American, because I wasn't white, because my skin was like hers.
I giggled. We all laughed together. Jen came out of the stall, and held my muffin for me.
After I came out, I was washing my hands, and the first cleaning lady came over to me and said, "Beautiful" pointing at me, and trailed off into another Chinese sentence. I naturally said, "Xie xie" (which means "thank you"). She then said, "Xie xie" followed with more Chinese, but she was asking me something. I shrugged, and she tried again, tossing, "American" into her sentence, and pointing at me as she asked. I assumed she was asking me what "xie xie" means in English. So I said, "Thank you" slowly, but not in that "you don't know English so I'll shout at you" kind of way. She repeated "thank you" with very good pronounciation, confirming that my assumption was correct. Then I said, "tui bu xi... excuse me," and she too repeated in English, although the "excuse" part was tough for her. I went to dry my hands with the white paper towel, and we both laughed again. I said, "xie xie" again, hobbled my way through goodbye in Chinese, and we both smiled as I left.
1:06 PM | Permalink
March 13, 2006
China Day 1: Visit to the China Library Association
It seems that every event on this trip is preceeded by a rather impressive meal. After a fabulous lunch, our delegation was bused over to the China Library Association and China National Library for our professional program of the day. Ms. Tang Gengsheng, Secretary General of the China Library Association, was our meeting head at the library, and with Carol Brey-Casiano, helped facilitate a discussion between the over 10 Chinese librarians and the large group of American delegates.
While I'd like to share the details I leared about CLA here, I'll reserve that for a later time, so that I highlight some of the question and answer session (with names where possible, I'm still learning names, despite the handy name tags we wear at all times).
Krista Griffiths, who works specifically with disabled and blind services at the state library of Utah, asked: Can and do libraries in China offer services to the blind and disabled? How?
The librarian from one of the Beijing district libraries mentioned that, through support from the Society of Sciences and the Society of Natural Sciences, a room has been built in the library specifically to meet the needs of the blind and disabled, as well as providing items and resources, including braille items, computers, and other equipment for blind and disabled patrons. A specially designed and paved walkway leads blind people straight from the front door to the reading room, and the room includes a special blind/disabled restroom. Computer classes, social programs, and reading activies have been developed by the library to meet in this room, and professionals from 8 countries have come to visit this very special resource.
Do libraries in China have Friends of the Library associations, and do they aid in fundraising (such as book sales) for libraries?
Many libraries have Friends groups and volunteers. While many donations come in from individuals to support the library, book sales and other fundraising events are not a regular occurence in China, but Secretary General Gengsheng very much likes that idea, and would like to encourage libraries in China to try it. Carol mentioned Friends of Libraries USA to the group as a way to find resources to enhance the Friends experience in China.
I'll cover more of the questions later, since the Business Centre is closing soon.
10:48 AM | Permalink
China Day 1: China Briefing
After breakfast this morning (I was very pleased to eat from an assortment of dim sum and fried rice with fruit and vegetables instead of the typical Western fare, but unfortunately no congee yet), our delegation was presented with a briefing on Chinese history and culture, along with more details to help us along in our trip. Tony Zhao and Leonard Wang are the National Guides for our trip, which means they are in charge of our group professional program logistics, as well as general contacts for the People to People program. Both gentlemen have been very kind, informative, helpful, and humorous as our fearless guides, using bus trips as opportunities for cultural education, meeting debriefing feedback sessions, and just good jokes.
Tony presented a good amount of information this morning. While the Destination Guides we received from People to People before our arrival in China pretty well detailed a brief history and cultural description of China, and the folder filled with excellently useful cultural information handouts provided tons of material, there were a few things not detailed in our documentation that I learned from this morning's meeting:
* If you look really closely at a map of China, and "use your imagination," as Tony put it, you can see that China looks like a rooster (this is like growing up on Long Island and learning in school that the Island looks like a fish, with Brooklyn at the head and the Hamptons at the tail). The same way that the US has a North and South with cultural differences, China is also broken up into North and South by the Yangzte, and the areas exhibit differences in:
- dialect
- food
- social welfare: for instance, in the north in the winter, the government requires all hotels provide heat in hotels, while in the south this requirement doesn't exhist.
- wedding traditions: for example, in the north a wedding banquet is held around lunchtime, while in the south the wedding banquets are traditionally around dinner.
* "China is dashing into an aged society," Tony told us this morning. A large percentage of China's current population is elderly.
* The Chinese government reportedly offers significant social welfare to resident minorities. For instance, minorities are not subject to the nationwide family planning and population control policies, and are not required to cremate their deceased (all Chinese nationals must be cremated post-mortem, to help the country conserve land area).
* Chinese citizens all hold a "household registration," which records whether or not they are considered an urban or rural citizen. Registrations are not dictated by where a citizen lives, but by the area of the mother's origin. The significance of registration in rural vs. urban areas is that the social welfare benefits are different. You can switch out of the regional registration you were born into; it's way easier to go from urban to rural registration than vice versa. Simple ways to go from rural to urban status include a degree from a 4-year college or university, accepting a public service position, military service retirement.
* When eating and drinking, it's customary to have leftover food on the serving platters, so it's not a problem if you don't eat everything. By having leftover food on the table, it shows that the host is generous and good, not cheap or uncaring. When you're done eating or drinking, the key is to leave some food on your plate, or some drink in your glass. Otherwise, you're supplies will be quickly replenished.
* When a Chinese person is asked to participate in something, but they cannot attend, it is customary for them to say, "We'll see," instead of "no."
Carol announced during the meeting today that I would be blogging my trip, so a big hello to those of you reading this from "back home," wherever you may be.
I also have tons of photos, but the computers here in the Business Centre of the hotel are not equipped with the drivers for my camera, so I'm not sure how soon I'll be able to post them. Carol also mentioned that her husband and trip co-coordinator Marcos Casiano would be posting photos of our trip to his site in the near future.
10:45 AM | Permalink
March 12, 2006
In China, will blog
Now that I've got the very important email to my husband and parents all settled, I can write a quick post.
Internet access in the Swissotel Beijing is 3RMB/min (~$.37/min), charged to my room, so I need to be quick for now. I'll have more to say later, after our walking tour of Tiananmen Square and the informal buffet dinner with the delegation this evening. And Carol Brey-Casiano, leader of our delegation, has volunteered the services of her laptop, which will be very helpful.
I've taken a few pictures, which will be up on my Flickr account as soon as I find out if I can do that here.
Many, many, many thanks to everyone who donated money to get me here! It's all very exciting, and I'll have plenty to write about, I'm sure.
1:27 AM | Permalink
March 10, 2006
Leavin' on a jet plane...
I get on the plane to Beijing in a few hours. Very *exciting*. The Cunninghams, parents of my friend Colby, were kind hosts for myself and my travel buddy Jen today, so I have borrowed Internet access for the moment.
We had many interesting discussions about libraries, librarianship, the task of archiving the Cunningham visual history (I will, no doubt, be making project plan notes for them in the margins of my journal this week), quantum physics readers' advisory, and copyright law. Sounds heavy, but it was light and fun.
It feels weird, yet liberating, to travel without my laptop. Finding net access as necessary will be quite the cultural adventure.
Alright, time to get ready to go to the airport and meet the rest of the delegation. When we finally hit Hong Kong, it'll be March 12 in China, but March 11 in the US. I can already tell time zones are gonna be a hoot.
See you on the other side...
11:58 PM | Permalink
March 7, 2006
4 days from China
My days are now consumed with packing, trying to get all my work square before I leave on Friday, and assuring my husband I love him and that I'll be home very soon. I'm exhausted, and I haven't even left yet. I'm also *terribly* excited.
I leave for San Francisco on Friday morning at 6a EST, and leave on a flight to Beijing via Hong Kong at 12:10a PST on Saturday morning. At some point in between, I believe the plan is for the group to somehow aggregate near the Cathay Pacific area of the international terminal. Planning with the group has been... interesting. I'll have more on that after my trip. I have some friends I might see in San Francisco while I'm there on Friday and on Monday, March 20, but if you're in town and you feel like hanging, send me email and let me know.
Many thanks to those who have sent donations, which I found both heartwarming and helpful. The worthy include (in alphabetical order):
Laura Blalock of The Creative Librarian
Sam Haynes
Colin Heyes
Jeanne Kramer-Smyth of C-Section Recovery (and who recently started the MLIS program in the archives concentration at U of Maryland)
Clifford Lawson
Steve Lawson of See Also...
Jen Muehlbauer of Not Too Late to Change the Name
Dorothea Salo of Caveat Lector
Carrie Tobey
Chris Zammarelli of Libraryola
I'm still accepting donations, big and small (the smallest donation was $10, the largest $50), since every little bit counts. The $200 I've raised in the past 2 weeks through the Paypal button covered my travel insurance, and will cover half of the professional gifts I'll be taking with me. Wanna be one of the worthy? Click the happy button below.
After much internal struggle, I've decided that I'm not taking my laptop with me. At first, the thought was horrifying, but really, I'd rather be without the laptop for 10 days than to lose it, or have it confiscated or stolen. Besides, it will be quite the adventure to try to do this guerilla style: I'm going light, flexible, highly mobile, grabbing computer and internet access in a surprise hit-and-run, as-available fashion via libraries, business centers, and internet cafes (which, as my fabulous visa-acquiring friend and librarian colleague Jennie Pu points out, are smoky but cheap and easy to find). I'll probably do a little light research on possible access locations, but not much, since that would diminish the festive guerilla adventure flavor of the trip.
Going the handwritten notes route for this trip should be fairly interesting, since I know tend to think at the rate I can type (which isn't too shabby), so overcoming the frustration of matching my thought speed to my handwriting speed will be a hoot. If they'll allow me to record the sessions, I might look into an inexpensive digital voice recorder, if there is such a thing. I figure if I can upload 5 photos a day to my Flickr account, and get some short summary up at least once a day on my blog, it'll be a nice real-time account. I might even be able to post something to the PLA blog about my public library visit. Since I'll be hitting PLA as soon as I get back (I'm taking March 21 off for jet lag, I'll be at PLA March 22 - 25), I can fill out my experience more in April.
No, seriously. I'll do it. This trip and the PLA conference will be the big bang for better posting habits to my blog. There, I've said it out loud, and it is therefore resolved. Heck, I'll even take a Carnival of Infosciences sometime in the summer (I've said it out loud, so I'm committed), after I've caught up on my blogging, and some much-needed sleep.
10:04 PM | Permalink
February 22, 2006
Going to China, begging for change
It's really an interesting subject line. I am leaving for China in two weeks to work with Chinese librarians. I could beg for change while I'm there, and try not to get arrested. But the begging for change I'm doing right now is different.
The cost of the trip is quite mighty, and I am but one public librarian trying to make her way.
Since I received my invitation letter in October, I've been doing my best to acquire sponsorship or even donations to help cover some of the costs of my trip, but it has been difficult. Most vendors or other large companies I've written to have basically given their donation money to the tsunami and Hurricane Katrina aid funds, which is totally understandable. Also, there aren't many grants and scholarships aimed at individuals (who aren't students) for short-term travel, and even then, ever more restrictions apply that don't include my situation.
Here it is, my request for donations, by way of my Paypal donation button, to see if maybe you, or other people you know, may perhaps make a small contribution to my trip. Every little bit counts, no donation is too small.
More about my trip
11:07 AM | Permalink
January 6, 2006
Rather troublesome
OK, I'm a bit worried.
Microsoft shuts down Chinese blog
[MSNBC.com 6 jan '06]
This is the country I'm going to visit in March. I'm going there to work with public librarians. I'm a librarian with a blog, and perhaps, dare I say, a "librarian blogger," who is a big believer in free speech and a dissident when it comes to subscribing to "blogger ethics" (I have my own, thank you).
I'm wondering what this will mean for me on my trip. I'm still trying to get details on what internet access will be like (how much it might cost me, how fast are we looking at, and whether or not it will be wireless). I'm also looking into what I will and will not have access to on the web. I'll need to call the folks from the program to ask whether or not even blogging the trip will be OK, given this hoopla and other issues that might come up.
Crazy.
3:16 PM | Permalink