Conseil définitif

Today is the last day of official teaching duties at ESI for this year: the conseil définitif where the grades and status of students, and especially the borderline ones, are discussed.

We'll be meeting all morning, going through all the students year by year.

It's also more or less the 10 month anniversary of my departure from Dublin, Ohio. My contract with Fulbright is up on July 6, but I'll be travelling home on the 4th since flights are a little cheaper that day.

I've cleaned out my office and will be handing back the keys after today's meeting. It's come full circle. And what a year it's been.

This blog will be discontinued as of my departure, as my reintegration into American culture isn't nearly as noteworthy as my discovery of the Moroccan one. Thank you, gentle reader, for following along with me over the past 10 months in my exploration of Library and Information Science (and a lot else) in Morocco. Chukrane. Merci.

What is privacy?

I've been trained in the American educational system and know that according to FERPA it's illegal to give a college student's grade to anyone but that student.

In essence, the U.S. government forbids us to even hint at a grade that a student might have gotten -- gone are the days of posting grades by social security number, as was the case when I started college in the early 1990s.

Privacy, when I was in France 10 years ago, was even looser than that. Student grades (or at least class rank) were a matter of common knowledge. Some professors started returning papers by handing out those that received the best grades. The papers that got the lowest grade were distributed last, which, of course, let the tension mount for the students at the bottom of the pile.

ESI subscribes to that older French notion of privacy -- students all know each others' grades. There's really no option to keep one's grade to oneself. I really wasn't surprised, then, when my grade for the DALF French exam was posted at the Institut Français de Rabat (IFR) on a bulletin board, there, for all the world to see (along with my date of birth, I might add). The DALF is the diplôme approfondi de langue française or the TOEFL for French. It's an official diploma that is in line with EU tests of langauge skills.

And I'm trying to redefine my notion of "private" and "not private" all over again here in Rabat in terms of education. I should be glad that the IFR has taken the option of posting the grades in public -- otherwise I wouldn't be able to prove that I'd passed the exam since diplomas won't be printed for another YEAR. Oh-là-là, back to the problem of paperwork.

Twitter in the news

I understand that CNN, etc. have been reporting Twitter "tweets" in lieu of journalists' reports about the crackdown in Iran. The French actually had a reporter in-country who was filming and reporting on the sly. That report aired two nights ago on France 2 as part of their Envoyé Spécial program. No mention at all of Twitter. I thought the French weren't on the Twitter bandwagon (the Moroccans certainly aren't from what I can tell).

Then Michael Jackson died, and twenty minutes of the news the following evening was about his career and the reactions of fans. Then, and only then, did France 2 show shot after shot of tweets about his death. They also showed YouTube video tributes from fans that had been posted in the 20 or so hours after his death.

ICTs are big here, and there's an SMS langague for Arabic (spelled using Latin character and Arabic numerals), but I'm not sure how Twitter's doing in Morocco. I guess that will be one thing to watch and see.

The wide world of paperwork

It was paperwork that got me to Morocco (in the form of a rather long and complex grant application during the summer of 2007) and it's paperwork that will get me home.

In order to receive my "baggage allowance" money from MACECE, I had to submit a final report about my experience. Luckily for me, retooling my symposium paper didn't take much time at all.

I've been working for the past week or so with a former colleague on creating a personal online repository. I was able to post the final Fulbright report and add in some metadata, etc. Having my own (shared) online repository is kind of nice, actually.

The airline ticket's been purchased for a few days now (since last Friday), so all that remains is the make-up exams on Thursday and the final sessions with the professors that will be held next week. Then the paperwork, and the stay in Morocco, will both just be a memory.

Defending a masters thesis at ESI

Today I was the fourth member of a committee for a student masters thesis defense. It was probably the best day I've had at ESI so far.

The student was brilliant, the thesis was very well written, no one had any major complaints, and the whole thing went off beautifully.

The defense had the following structure:

The members of the committee met briefly to discuss overall impressions. We entered the auditorium together, and the President of the committee (Mouna Benslimane) welcomed us all, and actually, she also went out of her way to welcome me in particular (very nice).

The student presented her work using a PowerPoint.

Then I, as the guest committee member, got to point out all of the things I ddin't like about the paper. It's not easy to go first when you've never seen this kind of thing before. The student had done so well and I had such a poor idea of what was expected of students at this level in Morocco that I only really mentioned cosmetic things about the paper itself. It did take me about 15 minutes, though, to go through all of the problems with the bibliography; those, of course, I do not consider cosmetic.

Then the other three members of the committee or "jury" spoke in turn. It was all very formal and very "thank you Mme the Président of the committee" which is kind of fun. I never tire of pomp and circumstance.

There were probably 40 people in attendance, and after the deliberation and the announcement of the decision ("tres bien" for both the presentation and the thesis itself), we all went and had cookies and coffee and mint tea at a lovely reception in the lobby of the school. We'd started at 2:30 and we finished around 5:00.

A fine afternoon and an enjoyable way to begin my last two weeks in Morocco. Thank you all for such a memorable experience. And of course, congratulations Fatima on a job well done!

As Oprah says ....

Ever since I lost my Internet connection in May (a brief but painful time for me), I've been learning to enjoy my satellite dish.

During her visit, Kirstin was fond of flipping through the hundreds of channels available in the chambre d'amis -- her favorites were a show with Arab gentlemen hunting with falcons (to a soundtrack of harmonica music) and a cooking show featuring fully veiled women who would flip up their scarves to taste sauces they were making.

It turns out, I have about seven French television stations, and have been enjoying watching the news in the evening, as well as talk shows at night. Last night, fashion icon Karl Langerfield was on On n'est pas couché, which was enjoyable background noise as I worked at the computer.

It's hard not to notice the satellite dishes everywhere in this country. They really are especially prominent on the roofs of the shanty-towns (called "bibonvilles" in French for the fact that the dwellings are made of old oil bins). Everyone watches TV (not just my neighbors, as shown in this photo from my kitchen), and not just the national station M2. Actually, I just noticed that Jodie Foster thriller about an airplane is on M2 tonight.... hmmm.

In any event, it didn't surprise me when Fatima came for a visit recently and starting quoting Dr. Phil to me. Then Oprah. She watches the show in English and reads the Arab-language subtitles. Mr. Obama may be doing all he can to promote peace and understanding between Americans and Muslims, but it turns out that it's the wisdom of Oprah that's really making an impression.

Have I caved and subscribed to her twitter feed yet? No. Will I? Probably.

Recap of guest speakers in my classes at ESI

Although I mentioned a few of the guest speakers in passing, it only seems right to give credit publicly to ALL of the fabulous librarians who gave of their time and energy to share their talents and their passions with a small group of third year undergrads at ESI in the National, University and Special Libraries class.

First semester, our class met at 8:30 in the morning on Monday. It was impossible to coordinate with speakers in America with the time difference, but we did succeed in bring two very interesting speakers to ESI.
Nozha Ben Saadoun from the BNRM spoke in November about her work in Cataloging. She prepared a great talk, brought examples, and came in on her day off to speak to us.
Eric Childress of OCLC visited us in December. He also presented on his day off (during his vacation!) and even agreed to speak again later that week to a different group of interested students.
We also toured the BNRM as a group, which was very enlightening.

During the second semester, class met at 4:00 on Monday, making it possible to invite Americans to participate via Skype or telephone.
Sarah Wenzel, librarian at the University of Chicago, prepared a great presentation describing her library and her work. And she presented the whole in FRENCH. Her keen sense of humor and charm were not lost on the students, nor was her status in WESS, despite her modesty about her leadership roles.
Ray Schwartz, systems librarian at William Patterson University's library, took the time during his vacation to come and talk to us for an entire class period about data mining and evaluation in university libraries. The new director even came to his talk; we were very honored to have Ray, indeed, and he really got us thinking.
Larry Olszewski, director of the library at OCLC, also prepared a wonderful presentation in FRENCH, introducing the topic of special libraries. Of all the people, literally, in the world to talk to my students about special libraries, can there be someone more qualified than Larry? As qualified, perhaps, but not MORE qualified, and naturally his presentation was flawless.
Caroline Szylowicz of the Proust Archive at UIUC spoke about the special collection that she heads. Caroline is French, so speaking in French was simple, and her passion for her subject came across very clearly. However, the Skype connection was unavailable from UIUC the day of the presentation, so Caroline had to bike home (quite heroically!) with her laptop at the last minute to be able to speak with us at the appointed time.
And, as a surprise "end of semester" speaker, we talked with Diane D’Almeida from BU who was able to give us an overview of libraries in different countries, and to help us wrap our brains around the place of ESI graduates in the wide world of libraries and international librarianship.

Yet again, I have reason to be proud of colleagues in libraries. Librarians are above all professionals who truly believe in what they do and who systematically give back to the profession without asking "what's in it for me?" These folks all gave of their time, energy and talent to speak to 16 students in Morocco whom they'd never met... I may be biased, but I don’t know that folks in other professions who would be so giving of their time and talents in this way.

Elections in Morocco

This past Friday, local elections were held throughout Morocco. There was a significant amount of hoopla leading up to the elections, with gatherings in the sports hall across the way from my apartment, and indeed, all over town.

Each of the political parties (and there are a LOT) has its own symbol, and the symbols actually seem to have meaning. Of the parties with exceptionally good symbols, I like to consider the disembodied eye, the rearing horse, and the smattering that appear in the photo I've included.

Parties explain in their lit how to vote for their candidates: "put an X over the ____ " with the symbol for the party. Many of the tracts have, what looks to me like "NO" signs over the symbol for the party, but it's just the X that explains how it's done.

Shipping and handling

Just mailed my first package from the post office to the States -- a small box of books weighing in at 7.5 kilos. In theory, I've got several more to go.

::: Poste Maroc :::

I sent today's box "economy" and paid 554.50 MAD for it, which seemed quite expensive. I've just done the conversion and now know why that seemed so pricey: $75!!

So, if that's roughly a 15 lb. box, at $75 for shipping, that's $5 per lb. I guess it could be worse (like the two-page letter that DHL wanted $125 to send, or the three cards I mailed yesterday that cost $10 in shipping!), but it's still giving me pause to think about unloading anything that's not books or electronics or a gift before I leave, to save myself the money in shipping/transport.

Royal Air Maroc has an interesting baggage policy where "sending" 23 kilos with them in the form of an extra bag is 1500 MAD or $200. In hindsight, I should have held back on the post office shipment, and stuck everything I've got to get back in an additional bag in the hold of the plane.

Next Fulbright .... I'll know.

The collaborative nature of time

Time is a human construct. We all seem to agree that when the sun is at the highest point in the sky, that is "12" and not "37" or "42" or "boo". There are 60 minutes in an hour and not 79, and 24 hours in a day. None of this is pre-ordained; it is simply agreed upon.

Daylight savings time is another temporal element that is agreed upon. In Morocco, we entered Daylight Savings on Monday, June 1. On the appointed day, my computer's time didn't change. When I look, Microsoft gently tells me that Casablanca is GMT, and that it does not move to a summer hour. Microsoft is wrong, and I've had to tell my computer that I'm in Lisbon in order to have the correct time display.

Today, in the last exam that I'll proctor in Morocco, students wanted to agree that we had started 15 minutes late so that they could continue answering the question for another 15 minutes. I couldn't actually agree to that based on my understanding of the 60-minutes-to-an-hour thing, and since I was the proctor, my take on time held.

Interestingly, there are NO CLOCKS in ANY ESI classroom. None. This explains, in part, why the students want their phones out during the exams -- to read the time. Despite the Director's recent prohibitive memo, phones were still out and white out was still madly being passed around today.

Time may be a collaborative constuct that is considered in different ways in different cultures (see prior blog posts about this), but for the first time in my life, I'm realizing that exams can be too.

While things like visits to the library, study, exams, and scholarship in general are fundamentally SOLO events in Western culture (although I admit this may be changing), the Moroccan culture is not Western. If the culture here is clan-oriented and group-based, why can't the approach to exams be as well?

And why wouldn't it be entirely logical to have a discussion about time with one's neighbor during an exam? Right after borrowing her white-out and handing it off to one's other neighbor?

Checking things off the list

I've had a mental list of things to do while in Morocco. Some have been work-related, many have been relative to living in a place so very different from other places I've called home.

Getting on a bus was the last thing I *really* wanted to do. Abdelaziz came and met me in Rabat and we took a bus to his new apartment yesterday evening, on the spur of the moment. To my surprise, there were two employees on the bus: the driver and the ticket lady. The ticket lady took our money, the driver drove the bus. It was very efficient, actually. I'm not sure what happens, though, when the busses get so crowded that it's standing room only.

Abdelaziz and his wife greeted me like royalty. They opened their home to me, offering me first a round of sweet Moroccan mint tea, then coffee and goodies. I also got to look at their photo album from their recent wedding -- the photos look like other Moroccan wedding album photos I've seen: very solemn and formal. They remind me of the photos of my grandparents' marriage in 1941. The "serious" wedding photos is a tradition that's all but lost in the New World, I think.

Finally, I was invited into the home of a friend (perhaps the last thing on my list). The new apartment is their pride and joy. Abdelaziz and Mounia only moved in last week, and they've already made a lot of progress toward turning the place in Salé into a home, and I wish them lots of luck with it.

Moroccan music festivals

Morocco's THE place for music these days... during the last part of May, the Mawazine festival took place in Rabat. For roughly 10 days, stages all over town featured performances by local and internationally known groups: programme. For example, the Morrocan female rap group that one of the Fulbrighters is studying played on May 19th. The concerts were free, although it was also possible to purchase tickets if one wanted to be really close to the stage.

Stevie Wonder performed at the closing Mawazine event on May 23, and my free spot on the lawn was better than some $50 tickets that can be had in American stadiums for similar events. The lights, stage, musicians, and sound were all excellent -- and I enjoyed watching the monitors to get a good view of Stevie and his daughter singing together. Unfortunately, at another concert that night, 11 concert-goers were killed in a stampede.

Fès is currently sponsoring its annual 10-day Sacred Music Festival. The concerts aren't free, but are a huge draw for the city. I know at least two Americans up there as I write this.

I had the good fortune to hear about Stevie Wonder from Fulbrighter Jaci and to hear about the festival in Fès from Fulbrighter Kate. It's nice to be part of a network that's so well-connected and cultured. I should also mention that both Abdelaziz and Jallal knew all about the Rabat festival and graciously shared information about it over coffee.

Final exams and proctoring

ESI has just started the two-week exam period. Like French schools and universities, they have a very intensive exam period at the middle point in the academic year, and they have an even more demanding schedule at the end of the year. Students have one exam per day for most of the allotted two weeks.

I proctored my first exam yesterday (94 students in the first year), and noticed several differences between what I saw at ESI and what I'd seen in France.

First, students were allowed to have cell phones on their tables during the exams. They were also allowed to share materials (pens, white-out, rulers, etc.). There was a lot of movement during the exam, especially in the back half of the lecture hall.

Things that did NOT happen that I recall from proctoring French exams were the following: proctors didn't seem to move around the room and hover (other than me) -- proctors stayed in the front of the room. None of the students asked to use the rest room (whereas in France, we had a line going).

Lastly, unlike the French university classes in languages and literature that I experienced (both as a student and as a proctor/teaching assistant), there were no oral exams to balance out the writtens.

From my outsider's perspective, the exam structure and application is another case of borrowing from one or two systems, and making the end-product uniquely Moroccan.

In French it's bad luck to wish someone "good luck" -- so I'm wishing all of the ESI students "bon courage" and "bonne continuation" as they prepare for and take this round of exams.

Tolerance, tradition, and going incognito

On a given day, I don't tend to draw too much attention in the streets of Rabat. I dress more or less like the Moroccan women my age (long sleeves and sometimes tunics, pants, etc.). There are a lot of Europeans who live in the capital, and they, like me, don't care to be treated like tourists. There's plenty of room for everyone, and in general, everyone's very tolerant of differences.

On the street, folks will automatically speak to me in French. Men greet me with "bonsoir" at just about any hour of the day, and I also often hear "salut" or even "pardon". There's just a lot of French here, even if Morocco isn't fully a Francophone country. And White people are assumed to be French.

Nadia, Eric and I went to the local popular market last weekend to get veggies for Sunday's feast. Nadia did the buying, I watched, and Eric took photos from afar.

Not one person spoke to me in French when I was in my jellabah and headscarf. A few spoke to me in Arabic. And more importantly, no one bat an eye. Of course, I never would have gotten the scarf on properly without Nadia's help. It was her idea that I go incognito in the first place.

It's interesting the reactions that folks have based on preconceived notions about appearance. A woman in a headscarf is modest and laudable in Morocco, whether she has pale skin or dark skin. Frankly, I don't really want to imagine the reaction that I would have received in a mall in the United States in the same attire, as I fear many of my countrymen are a lot less tolerant than the average Moroccan.

LG X110 Netbook, laptops, and ESI

Before I left for Morocco, I looked into getting a netbook. The small screens were a little off-putting, but what really killed the deal was the small keyboards that I kept seeing. I got a Sony Viao laptop on sale instead.

While in France over spring break this year, I bought a little LG netbook. I don't exactly think of computers when I think of LG, but I took the plunge mostly because I needed something practical. The price was right ($400) and the size/weight of it is unbeatable. It fits in my purse, but it has a full sized keyboard and a 10 inch screen. I'm blogging on it now from a hotel room in Casablanca, connected to the Internet via my LG modem.

Netbooks are showing up all over the place in Morocco now -- as are pay-as-you-go modems that connect to cell towers. I only noticed the netbooks when I returned in April, and the modems have onlyn been competitively priced since the beginning of 2009. Change is afoot.

My students don't seem to have a set-up like mine quite yet... In fact, ESI students rarely brought laptops to school, hardly ever took notes on them in class if they did have them, and didn't seem to be addicted like American students are.

However, there were definitely lots of students with laptops in the common areas of ESI between classes and during lunch. Perhaps the wifi near the library is a kind of siren song? Maybe by next year it will be accepted for students to start bringing them to class. The whole environment reminds me of classes in the United States about 10 years ago. It just wasn't cool to lug around a laptop (besides, what if it broke?) but today, it's impossible to be in a classroom setting without one.

Maybe netbooks/modems like mine will make it easier for ESI student to take the plunge and have unlimited Internet access at school. I've offered to leave my wireless router with the tech guys so that they can have a stronger wifi signal for next year -- it's the same as the router they've already got installed. For the students' sake, I hope they take me up on it.

We'll miss you, Uncle Jim

I got a series of emails yesterday evening about the unexpected death of my mother's brother, Jim. Here I was, on the other side of the Altantic, and I knew about the death right along with the other cousins. It's amazing how family can organize in times of great sorrow.

My mother and her husband are on vacation, however, and no one at home in St. Louis had their cell phone numbers. Strangely enough, yesterday was the day that I finally decided to buy a modem that connects to the Internet through cell phone towers (Wana). It was when I came home yesterday evening and plugged in the modem for the first time that I read the emails about Uncle Jim. I was able to send my mother's cell phone number to her St. Louis-based brother, who in turn contacted her that very day.

Everything this happens for a reason. I can't explain why I got Internet yesterday afternoon, why I didn't wait until today or next week. If I hadn't gotten that modem, I wouldn't have been able to communicate with the family and to pass on my mother's cell number. And I wouldn't know. And so, I'm struck wondering how the family would have handled this without the use of modern ICTs.

Of course, I'm sorry that I can't be there with my family at this very sad time. Uncle Jim was a dear man (who even, I'm delighted to mention, visited me once in Dijon many many years ago), and his death is truly a loss for us all. Uncle Jim, we'll miss you very much.

Guest speakers

Throughout the school year, I've tried my best to show the group of third year students that there is a world of libraries outside of Morocco, that this world is not only accessible to them, but that it is interested in them and that it will embrace them.

I'm pleased that almost everyone I approached to present to my students was more than happy to do so, many presenters going to great lengths to perfect their "library French" or to come up with a Morocco-friendly approach to a topic, or both.

Yesterday was the last regular class period, and we had one final guest lecturer -- a former Fulbrighter who had worked at the university library in Ifrane. Diane d'Almeida of Boston University Library spoke eloquently about that experience, spoke about her more recent Fulbright in Jordan, and gave some wonderful professional advice to the students. In no uncertain terms, Diane was an absolute delight. It was obvious that the students were taken with her; the fact that they could see her (and that she could see them) I think was particularly beneficial for all.

Moroccan noise levels and the Mediterranean way

Yesterday at the ESI faculty meeting, I finally was able to identify what's different about these Moroccan faculty meetings: it's not that professors disagree vehemently with each other or that attendees arrive late (that happens in the US too); it's not that part of the meeting is in Arabic or that sweet mint tea and almond cookies are served (these elements are less likely to be found in the US, I admit).

It's the volume. Morocco may be an Arabophone country, but its geographical location makes it a Mediterranean one, above all else. Reminded me of the converstaions that one can overhear in Italian where it sounds like all of the parties truly hate each other and are screaming, but in fact they're just "shooting the breeze."

The librarian at the Embassy had me over for dinner earlier this week. Her husband made a point of explaining that the Arabic spoken in Morocco sounds "harsh" to other speakers of Arabic, and that speakers from Egypt, for example, might think that Moroccans are angry. I'll confirm right now that they can sound angry to non-Arabic speakers, too, even when they aren't. The volume though, is what really seals the deal for me.

The cab driver this morning had the radio on so loud that I could hardly think. And two days ago, when a young man unceremoniously made a grab for my bottom in the street, the absolutely blood-curdling scream I let out (followed by me yelling louder than I ever would have thought possible) didn't seem to get anyone's attention.

Perhaps all the folks on the street were all busy talking animatedly to each other or listening to music, or otherwise being Mediterranean. I wonder what would have come of the same scene in Italy, or in Missouri or New Jersey.

Working from Home

When Ray came to visit, I moved into the "chambre d'amis" so that he and his wife could have the master bedroom.  Despite the low desk and the hassocks, I end up getting a lot of work done in there.  And I love the rug.  However, the neighbors with whom I share a wifi connection are out of town, and their router is now officially down.
In short, no Internet from home for me, which also means no calls in the evening to the United States, no email, no blogging on Sunday, etc.
As a positive, I get even more done without the online distractions, but I admit that it's not entirely easy to plan ahead for an evening without Internet.  I guess I'll get more used to it as time goes by. Until then, I'm hoping like anything that my neighbors are planning a short trip. However, when I saw them before their departure, they had about six suitcases between the two of them. 

The photo is one of many excellent shots Ray got during his stay.

Blogué avec le Navigateur Flock

9th Annual ESI Forum

Yesterday and today marked the 9th annual Forum at ESI. While teaching yesterday morning, I was stopped mid-sentence and asked to let Cataloging students out so that they could attend the opening.

It was quite the affair, and everyone was dressed so well!

Today's session drew smaller crowds, but has been an incredible success all the same. The forum is organized entirely by students, and the sponsorship they were able to get was impressive.

The flyer for the event details the names of speakers and other events, and is available on the newly redesigned ESI website as a PDF.

Students had the program printed and had notebooks made; they also had a photographer taking orders for yesterday's photos (reminded me of cruise ships, actually).

As a follow-up to recent posts: my name is no longer listed on the "corps enseignant" page of the new Website. Alas, my 15 minutes of fame have passed. Also, as a visiting professor, I am unable to serve on the jury of the masters student, and had to hand back the masters thesis today. It's unfortunate, but better to know now than later.

The BNRM, with Ray

P1040970
Originally uploaded by schwartzray

While Ray Schwartz was here, we toured the National Library (the BNRM). We really got the royal treatment. Here's one of Ray's photos of the area where specialists repair old books. These folks are not graduates of ESI, but have been trained extensively in their craft.

Corps enseignant

Everyone likes to be part of a winning team. Recent days have been very good to me in that respect. First, at the request of the new director of ESI, my name has been included on the Web page of teachers (the "corps enseignant" page; I'm at the bottom). I'm very pleased.

One of my students in the second year even found my name and sent me an email at my new official ESI email account. She then proceeded to visit me at my office yesterday, and we had a delightful converstation.

Another student also found me recently, to ask that I be one of the readers for her masters thesis. I am, of course, honored to do it and was surprised to see that it's not at all a thin document. It's amusing to be on a committee for a masters student thesis when I myself have never defended a masters thesis -- and my own Rutgers dissertation is still very much a work in progress.

Further, Rutgers's MLIS program has been declared sixth in the nation in 2009, and although I've had nothing to do with the successes that have come this year, I'm still pleased to be able to claim the same academic "home" and am delighted to have taught in their program in the past.

Tomorrow is the European and Moroccan version of Labor Day -- a day off being a fitting way to celebrate new successes in LIS education, after all.

Access to information, access to education

In the very recent past, I've been approached twice via email by a
complete stranger who wanted a copy of a scholarly article I'd
written. I really do respect folks for trying to get free access to an
article by contacting the author; it makes sense to try to access
things as one can.

For example, at LIBRES we get a lot of well-intentioned manuscripts
that just don't seem to have consulted the right literature. When this happens,
the project has no foundation. Developing countries have a lot of
opportuntities to request free access to library databases of articles
and other scholarly content, but the libraries in the countries have
to be willing to take the leap and the patrons have to be willing to
go onsight to do their research.

I'm not convinced, for example, that Moroccan libraries have all
subscribed to the plethora of databases that are free to African
libraries. -- Access to information.

The government's doing its best right now to expand access to higher
education here in Morocco. The efforts are commendable. But today as
Nadia and I were making my bed, she explained to me that the other
girls in her family got to go to college, but that she didn't. And
then she started crying. -- Access to education.

I applaud all the efforts in the right direction on these two issues
in Morocco, but quite simply, more has to be done. I haven't been
able to bring myself to tell Nadia that I worked as a cleaning lady at
one point too. Perhaps, really, the only true difference between her
and me is 10 years and our nationalities.

For a number of reasons, both personal and professional, I find that
thought to be fundamentally disturbing.

Professeur avec chaire, higher ed, and reforms

I'm intent on recording things in this blog that pertain to the current Moroccan educational system, and since it relies heavily on the old French educational system, things pertaining to past-present-future elements of French higher ed. are also of interest, par extension. While at ENSSIB in March, the professors explained to me the notion of "professeur avec chaire" and I admit to having found it fascinating.

The FORMER French UNIVERSITY system (not the ECOLE system, like we have at ESI) involved a hierarchy that was quite complex. Professors did a PhD, then they did a second PhD (doctorat d'état). This second diploma permitted them to join the upper echelons of the teaching faculty at the university. For each area of specializtion in a university department, there was one professor "avec chaire" (meaning, the boss or the "mandarin") and the others under him/her were all "sans chaire". The only way to move up was to wait for a retirement or a change of post of the one professor "avec chaire."

This system is no longer in effect, and Sarkozy is in the middle of making even more dramatic reforms to higher ed in France. Those in universities are striking daily, and the situation doesn't look good. Mr. Sarkozy wants to Americanize education, increasing competition between professors, changing missions and objectives for universities, and doing away with (in the opinion of some) the arts and humanities.

The reforms in Morocco are not as sweeping, but they are also very real. I attend my first meeting about them this week at ESI, and am interested to learn more about the topics that are on the plate in Moroccan Ecoles during this period of higher ed reform.
'

The fluid concept of time

Dave Barry is married to a Spanish-speaking woman -- if I remember correctly, she's Cuban-American. She has a concept of time that differs from his according to a very funny and memorable book of his I read years ago. I wish I could remember the title of it.

Although I first learned in France that time moves differently for different peoples (and for different cultures), I'm discovering that Moroccan time can also move at its own pace.

American colleague Ray Schwartz spoke to ESI students last Monday about his ongoing project of library evaluation through data mining. Class was designated to start at 4:00, and we wanted to set up beforehand. The technican couldn't understand why we'd do such a thing since the students wouldn't be there at 4:00 anyway.

And they weren't.

Nadia arrives at 9:45 on Sunday morning instead of 9:00 (but this is her *day off* so I understand completely!) The symposium dinner started last night at 8:45 pm but was listed as beginning at 8:00 in the invitation. And, well, the panels and speakers at the three-day long symposium mostly started a half hour to an hour later than scheduled.

None of this is to suggest that things run on schedule in the United States or that France and Morocco are the ONLY places in the world where time is more fluid than rigid. However, it's something to keep in mind when scheduling Web talks for class with folks in the United States. Not only do I have to calculate the time difference for next week's talks (by Larry Olszewski of OCLC's Library and Caroline Szylowicz of UIUC's Proust Archive), but I have to figure in the Moroccoan time as well. Let's hope I've calculated correctly.

Fulbright Symposium and Slideshare

Yesterday, today and tomorrow is the annual Maghrebi Studies Symposium for Fulbright Grantees in Morocco. I was scheduled to present about a subject of my choice on the first day. Since comparative librarianship has been a budding interest and since I'd been interested in formalizing my thoughts on the topic, I volunteered to talk about LIS education in Morocco.

My 25-minute presentation was well-received. To be complete about creating a record, I posted the slides to Slideshare last night before going to bed. That was nine hours ago, and the presentation's already gotten 9 views. Slideshare considers itself the YouTube of presentations. Hard to believe there's that much traffic on an LIS education presentation that covers a country in the developing world.

Views of Library and Information Science (LIS) Instruction in Morocco

View more presentations from Heather lea Moulaison.

Just goes to show that the Fulbright follks at MACECE are on the right track in organizing this symposium every year. I'm very grateful to them for the opportunity, and was honored to be able to take part.

Choosing the ESI director, a reprise

Last week, I met with the new director of ESI, Mr. Lemallem. After our meeting, I understand why the students are so excited about his appointment.

Like most of the professors at ESI, Mr. Lemallem is a polyglot. He's also aware of blogs, because he found this one and read it. In response to my blog posting about the difficulty I had following the process of naming a new ESI director, he explained the following :

For those in the system, the selection process was transparent. Each candidate submitted his vision for ESI, and the top eight candidates spoke at the Ministry that sponsors ESI: the Haut Commissariat au Plan. The original call for applications is in Arabic and is still on the ESI website.

The names of the search committee members were known, and the five members were prominent, competent, and came from different but complementary backgrounds. Once the top three finalists were selected by the committee, the names and files were sent to the King who had the final decision.

Since Mr. Lemallem's arrival, he's had a lot of tough tasks to tackle. The educational reform will require ESI to change the structure of the program in the coming year. With the Bologna Accords in Europe and with Sarkozy's sweeping and unpopular “Americanization” reforms in France, the theme of higher ed. reform is definitely in the air. Educational reforms have also been a priority locally since the new King ascended the throne almost a decade ago.

I'm thrilled with the results of my discussion with the new director at ESI and my new insights. Further, two days after the meeting, I had a brand new ESI email address and should be added to the list of professors on the ESI website shortly. I also hope to get the chance to participate in the ongoing ESI meetings about the reform (the invitation to which will surely be sent to my new email account).

The SCI (formerly SCILS) Rabat section, class of 2009.

 Jill Campaiola of my doctoral cohort was here for a visit this March.  I was delighted to put her up for a few days, and enjoyed exploring some of the medina and the tourist attractions with her.  I'm grateful to Jill for sharing her photos, and am really looking forward to her return in July!

Blogué avec le Navigateur Flock

Gen X, social media, and libraries

It's interesting being a Gen-Xer and living abroad in 2009. Although I've been using Facebook for about two and a half years professionally, my friends from 5, 10, and even 15 years ago are starting to create accounts and get online in droves. In the past two days, I've reconnected with two friends from my undergraduate days, a friend from the days of my grad work in French, and a librarian that I know through NMRT committee work (and whom I met in person ONCE at a conference five years ago).

Before my recent travels to France, I connected with friends and acquaintances that I haven't seen in years through Facebook and through TripIt's application in LinkedIn. All of these French contacts found me initially.

None of these new online connections would have been possible a year ago simply because Gen Xers and the French weren't yet using social media for networking this way. If I had been abroad in 2007-2008, there wouldn't be this wealth of opportunity to reconnect with friends and colleagues, and to establish contact almost instantly with newfound “connections” like one of the librarians at ENSSIB, with whom I am now “friends” on Facebook after my presentation.

The presentation that I gave at ENSSIB on March 25, 2009 was about social networks and the information literacies that university librarians should possess http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~moulaiso/MoulaisonENSSIB2009 .pdf. These Social Networking Literacies (SNL) will allow the creation of new and innovative library services that capitalize on social media. I was delighted that Terry Weech of UIUC's GSLIS made time at the end of his presentation on libraries and networking to allow me to share ideas about these new competencies with ENSSIB students, librarians, and instructors.

If my own overwhelming list of “friends” on Facebook and LinkedIn are any indication, the time really has come for librarians to capitalize on online social networks. Thanks to Joe Murphy (Yale Science Library and Library Journal “Mover and Shaker”) for being first author on our original presentation as presented at ACRL in mid-March 2009 in Seattle.

Social Networking Literacy Competencies for Librarians

View more presentations from Joe Murphy.

I've gotten nothing but great feedback from librarians who attended his very inspired presentation. And somehow, on SlideShare, it's gotten 4 "favorites"!

My ICT addiction

Last night was perhaps the first night I've spent without a cell phone in the past 8 years. I certainly wasn't an early adopter of the things, and I don't use mine regularly at all.

But, when I absolutely couldn't get it to charge yesterday, something had to be done. I took it to my regular guy at the Meditel store (that would be Rachid) and he offered to look into it overnight. In all honesty, I'd been planning to buy a new one. I'm issue of a throw-away society, after all; why repair when you can replace? But Rachid though it could be fixed with minimal effort, so I left it in his capable hands for the night.

I don't think I had any actual physical signs of withdrawl -- no shaking or cold sweats or anything. But without the phone, I did feel somewhat vulnerable, like something big was missing. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are such a huge part of life in the developing world that I really felt lost without it. Besides, I went to quite a deal of trouble to get that formerly T-mobile Motorola phone unlocked when I'd arrived -- I'd had it in mind to use it the whole year or until it was stolen, which ever came first. It was a trusty solider in the fight for finding things to do and staying in touch with folks here in Morocco.

The phone was returned safe and sound (and charged) this morning; I picked it up after Cataloging and promptly started calling and texting, blissful at the reunion with my old friend. Rachid didn't charge me at all for his services -- but I've over-paid several times in the past, so I think it all evens out. After yesterday's episode, I have to admit, though, that I can't imagine what life would be like for me without the Internet.

In short, banish the thought of going Internet-less for a day! The very idea sends shivers down my spine.

Medical care in Rabat

The last thing that anyone wants is to be ill while abroad. I've been having some problems with my knee, and finally had a watershed moment last Monday. Without thinking, I went to my favorite pharmacy.

The pharmacist insisted that I see a physician, and sent me to one down the street. Not only was I seen THAT DAY by a man who'd graduated from prestigious medical schools in France, but the 1/2 hour consultation cost me less than the $25 co-pay that I have through my grant program.

I didn't want to wait to order the medications through the grant, so I went back to the pharmacy. Medications for 20 days cost under $20. In short, $45 later, I have complete peace of mind that I'm receiving very good care.

Le coq d'Agdal

For most of the winter months, I could hear a rooster in one of the courtyards behind the apartments. He was a very devoted singer as well as a bit of an insomniac. Quite literally, he sang night and day. It always made me think of this precious song by Claude Nougaro about a rooster that's in love with a grandfather clock.

Claude Nougaro - Le Coq et la Pendule
envoyé par Quarouble

Time was probably also against the modern day Moroccan lover (see lyrics), and I can only imagine that the Agdal rooster was likely made into a meal of some kind (see recipe). The Moroccan bird's fate likely involved less wine, though.

I realized that I missed the late-night Don Juan's song only when I started hearing his replacement recently. Fortunately, the new rooster has better sleeping patterns, or is less love-struck.

All about the numbers

Within the short space of one week, we've been hit with not one but TWO changes to numbering systems in Morocco.

The post office has decided to create and distribute zip codes (postal codes) to everyone here in Rabat. I first noticed billboards along the roads, requesting folks indicate their post codes for quicker mail service. I didn't know mine (every piece of mail I get is addressed to a different post code, and some pieces don't have a postal code listed at all), and was amused at the idea.

Then, on about Wednesday, a sticker appeared near the mailboxes in my apartment, telling me my postal code. I'm 10090 -- a number no one had used before to send me mail, I'm quite sure.

While the United States were gearing up to change to summer time this weekend, we in Morocco were gearing up to add an additional digit to our phone numbers. I've been used to "phasing in" new things (the Y2K bug fears and changes to years, etc.), but overnight between Friday and Saturday, the phone systems all switched at once. It's now imposible to make calls without adding the new digit. To be honest, on Saturday when my calls didn't go through, I assumed my phone was just broken again.

These changes are no doubt positive ones, and I'm glad to see Morocco moving ahead in this way. I'm also glad that the Fulbright office shared news about the phone number changes, and that the post office was kind enough to advertise the postal codes. I still may not know if I have class tomorrow (I'll assume I do until I hear otherwise, I guess), but at least I know my new phone number.

Through the grapevine

ESI students are great. On Tuesday, several indicated in their FaceBook status that they were pleased with the choice of new director for the school.

It's official: Mr Lemallem will be the new director. The announcement came the day of the week when I'm not on campus, so I'm pleased that the students were so actively mentioning it in the social sphere. It's still difficult for me to understand when news breaks at the school -- my Derija isn't exactly improving and folks here are so bi- and tri-lingual that they forget that not all can understand.

Unlike American university searches for Presidents and Heads, nothing about this process was transparent for me, as a teacher from the outside. Suffice it to say, I'm very much hoping to meet the new director at some point before the end of the year. I tend not to be notified about faculty meetings, so this might be more difficult than it would seem.

On a related front, we'll be receiving two days of vacation for the Prophet's birthday next week. Other Muslim countries will celebrate on Monday and Tuesday, but Morocco started the month a day later, and will have the holiday on Tuesday (with our second day off on Wednesday). Students want to make a long weekend of it and not come in on Monday, and no one can really blame them. Instructors are in a very undesirable position, though, of trying to guess whether it's worth having class, or better to reschedule ahead of time. In one of my Monday classes, my students and I opted to reschedule. In the other class, it's still unclear whether we'll have class on Monday, five days from now.

I must say that one of the draws of coming to Morocco was the knowledge that I would be forced to (re-)learn to "go with the flow". It's just not worth developing high blood pressure over what are, to me, last-minute changes, and ones that are not communicated to the instrutors. Returning to the North American way of things, in a few months, is going to require a good deal of reverse culture-shock training, I think. As of right now, though, I'm trying desperately to hang in there and take Moroccan life as it comes. New director, unplanned days off, and all.

Savoir-faire v. savoir

I've run into the argument often enough with teaching cataloging: how much savoir-faire or know-how needs to be part of the cataloging curriculum (so that students know how to catalog when they finish) v. how much knowlege needs to be presented, so that students have a broad understanding of the past, present, and future of the field.

Practitioners say that savoir-faire should be taught; academics say theory should be the emphasis. This is roughly the distinction between extended practical training that one would get in a workshop and theoretical approaches one expects to find in a university setting.

LIS in North America is in a strange position. The professional degree for librarians is a university masters, requiring that programs integrate both savoir-faire and savoir into the curriculum. For most professional positions in the US/Canada culture, it's expected that candidates will have university credentials anyway, and that continuing education for acquiring new skills is part of just about any professional field.

Recently, I've been struck by the fact that library school in Morocco emphasizes the kind of training I expect to find in N. American trade schools.

ESI is indeed a "School" and not part of a university. Students are in classes more hours per day than high school students in the United States, and they are told just about everything they need to know by their instructors. Perhaps this is a product of the emphaisis on documentalism in Morocco. But what if librarianship requires more theory, and it's just not part of the program?

The interesting thing would be to understand how the choice of education style impacts the field as a whole, librarianship in particular, in Morocco. Apparently "informatists" don't stay too long in their positions before they move up in the ranks at their place of employment. New graduates are brought in to take their places. The second question, then, would be: How does the coming-and-going of information professionals impact the information landscape in Morocco: if there are few who have a robust understanding of the field and who are in professional positions, then how can the large-scale advocacy of libraries be expected?

l'Institut Culturel Italien and Moroccan archeology

The Institut culturel italien in Rabat is similar to the Institut français de Rabat in that it organizes cultural events for members and interested folks in the community. Last evening, the center hosted a lecture called « L'archéologie du Maroc antique » and the event was standing room only. Professor Emanuele Papi from the Univeristy in Sienna talked about the Italo-Moroccan team's excavations of recent years and what had been learned.

My class at ESI ran late (we had to talk about plagiarism and it took a while longer than expected) so I arrived 10 minutes late. I can only assume that the presentation began on time, and I learned a lot during the time I was there.

In the period before the Romans, the Mauritanian period, all trading villages had to be built inland because of the high tides associated with the Atlantic. Settlers would take a river inland for 10 km and set up trading villages in naturally protected areas. The Mediterranean coast to the north was entirely inhospitable, and only from the level of Tangiers down could trading settlements begin.

When the Roman toops arrived, they came in small numbers and with soldiers who had been recruited in Spain, Syria, and Bulgaria. Some of the "Romans" were Berbers who collaborated, and took Latin versions of their Berber names. It is likely that none of the "Romans" in Morocco had ever set foot in Italy, much less in Rome. Volubilis is the most well-known Roman installation, but there are others. One site, called Chellah, is near Salé in Rabat.

In one Moroccan city, Essouria, a center for dying purple dating back to Roman times has been identified. It takes 11,000 mollusks to dye one small shirt purple using these ancient techniques. The liquid pigment is unstable and cannot be transported; the fabric must be transported to the dying center. Dr. Papi's team can be certain of the production of the dye because of the mounds of mollusk shells in the area.

The Romans may have been among the first colonizers of Morocco (followed by the Arabs, the Spanish and the French), but this scholarly presentation was in the language of the most recent colonizers, the French. Dr. Papi did a beautiful job of describing his work in French, to an audience of French speakers, nestled away in a room at the Italian Cultural Center. French may no longer be the international language it once was, but it continues to be the language of scholarly communiation in Morocco. Of course, the audience was largely Western, but that should be the topic of another blog post, I suppose.

Street parking

Throughout the city of Rabat, men will help you parallel park, will watch your car (sometimes washing it), and will help you pull out into traffic, all for the small fee of a few dirhams. These men are identifiable by their royal blue lab coats. None of this activity is sanctioned by the government; in fact, when the city installs parking meters, it's still necessary to pay both the attendant and the meter.

These parking attendants are self-organizing. Within the network, they vy for the best streets and get to know the inhabitants. When they go out of town on vacation, they find a replacement. The blue coats are a tradition, not something official.

Around the corner from me, a new attendant appeared last week. He must be about 11 years old. I suppose he has to work -- despite governmental claims to the contrary, the economic crisis is hurting Morocco, especially in terms of tourism. This boy works all day, while American boys are in school learning to read and to reason. I've been giving a lot of thought recently to whether Morocco should being using French or English for international communications. Perhaps in doing so, I've been overlooking a much more serious problem: that of 50% illiteracy within the country.

Cataloging I and II

This week I met both of the classes of students that will be in the undergraduate cataloging classes at ESI. They are the first and second year students, and M. Alli is the main instrutor for the classes.

The first years get a taste of cataloging theory at the beginning, and I get two days during that period to discuss the basics of MARC. That's a whole week -- a lot in terms of the time alloted for the class (and I'm very grateful). The rest of the semester is spent studing the cataloging code used in France (AFNOR) and applying it to examples. At the end of the class, I also get several sessions where I'll be able to walk all 90 or so students through the process of marking up their AFNOR records with MARC 21.

The second years dive straight in to using AFNOR for more complex cataloging problems and formats. I get the last three class periods to introduce them to MARC and to walk them though some record creation. We'll use the Koha with Class service through LibLime (thanks to LibLime for hosting us, and for giving a French interface when possible!) It's all very, very exciting!

In all honesty, I expect that Moroccan libraries will not as a whole adopt the use of MARC records ever. Online catalogs are not yet the norm over here, and I hope that XML formats will be the library gold standard by the time that Moroccans are ready to get online en masse; no one will ever need to learn clunky old MARC. The hope is that our preliminary look at MARC cataloging procedures today will serve as a solid point of departure for the librarians in the trenches in the future.

And for once, I'm trying to be Moroccan about my handouts. I'm trying very hard to prepare handouts that are in the style of the other materials used in class ... to encourage reuse next year when I'm gone.

Movies

I decided to see a film before leaving Barcelona. About.com lists a few movie theatres in Barcelona that show subtitled films. It's my understanding that Europe's Latin countries are more fond of showing dubbed foreign films, whereas its Anglo-Saxon countries tend to show subtitled ones. Since I don't speak Spanish, a "VO" film (version originale) in English or French with Spanish subtitles was in order.

I finally found that the Casablanca Theatre (the name seemed fitting) was showing a French film that I've been meaning to see for about a year: Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis. The film was THE movie sensation of the year last year in France, and I just kept missing it. As expected, the film was an absolute delight, and the theatre reminded me of the small center-city theatres I used to frequent in France.

In comparison, Morocco doesn't seem to have the same movie theatre culture. Moroccans certainly enjoy films, as evidenced by the roving vendors of pirated DVDs that are on just about every street in Rabat. There are only two movie theatres in Rabat, and the selection of films is limited. The Institut Francais de Rabat sponsors a film each week, which is reasonable. There are more theatres in Casa, however. Apparently, there's a district with theatres that only show pirated films. There, it's possible to see American films before they come out it America, it seems.

I've asked Moroccan friends if they think this disrespect for intellectual property is holding Morocco back, since what is evident in the world of cinema is surely evident in other realms too. The answer is always "no", but I admit to having a hard time knowing what's to be gained, in the very least by permitting theatres to operate that way. In Sidney Poitier's memoires, he mentions sneaking into the theatres as a child since he couldn't afford to pay for a ticket. Perhaps saving Moroccans the humiliation of sneaking around is worth something. It's difficult, however, to see how a laissez-faire attitude toward intellectual property will benefit the country in the long run.

WSDM, Day 3

Final day of the WSDM2009 conference: presentations the first day gave a lot of emphasis to translation and multi-lingual content, including the keynote from Google. Apparently Google would like to translate all of the Web, which sounds pretty ambitious. It makes me realize, though, that perhaps I’m on the right track being interested in working with audio files in “critical languages” (i.e. languages not commonly taught in schools in the US). However, there remains little interest in audio, from what I can tell.

A total of 225 participants attended both the conference and workshops, and a total of 12 student grants were awarded (out of 69 applications). I’m proud that I was given one of the student awards, and am even more grateful that I was one of 7 students to receive both free registration and some travel support. I will likely revisit some of the talks, which will be available at videolectures.net. And, wsdm2009 is the Flickr tag in case I want to browse photos of the event.

In some ways, this conference has been good because it let me participate in the workings of an epistemic community that is related, but not identical to the library and information science community. I thought I might get farther in understanding how to make A/V files retrievable on the web, but I really didn’t find out much. I met a lot of different folks interested in various aspects of indexing, so the event was in no way a wash! I leave tonight on the night bus for Madrid, and will fly back to Rabat on EasyJet on Friday afternoon.

WSDM, Day 2

This morning focused on data mining. Some papers used transaction logs to study users, which is an approach I’d never really considered. Perhaps this is another difference between computer science and information science. The three evening “late breaking results” sessions all focused on social tagging. One of the papers cited papers that I’m familiar with (finally!). Another paper compared LCSH headings to tags in Library Thing. So, we’ve had one presentation per day so far interested in categorizing books, but neither seemed to have contacted LIS departments.

I admit to being surprised about the extent to which we’re all in silos in academe. The astronomer with whom I had dinner has been working on taxonomies. He commented that, to his surprise, as he was working on the project he realized that librarians have been working on these problems for ages. There’s also a linguist here who’s interested in machine translation, etc. and she’s also interested in some of the things I am and knew of some speech recognition work being done in Europe. In fact, I came here to learn about audio-visual digital libraries, but I’m finding a lot more overlap when it comes to the organization of information aspects.

I admit I’d had high hopes for discussing my project with the people at the Google booth, but I guess digital libraries don’t always speak to everyone. Folks from Google greeted the women of the conference today in a coffee-break session, at a booth staffed by two men. I assume there are women who work at Google; perhaps they were all busy.

WSDM, Day 1

Today was the first day of the WSDM conference -- in beautiful Barcelona, Spain. I can't say I've seen much of Barcelona given that I arrived this morning and was in the conference for 12 hours straight. Maybe by Thursday I'll have information on Barcelona. For now, though, I'm thorougly absorbed by what I saw at the conference today.

The early morning was devoted to Google (I had no idea that their method for storing information about Web documents was so similar to the raw MARC record that is used in library systems, tags and all) thanks to the keynote by Jeffrey Dean from Google in a talk that actually made the news. A real treat.

The rest of the morning was devoted to Web retrieval problems, and many seemed like problems that library and information science have been working with for a while. The "Query by Document" (QBD) paper was interested in cross-references on a document-level, and proposed using wikipedia for expansion. A paper on personalization/"group"ization was concerned by the query, the relevance of documents, and the user profile. Again, I'm reminded these aren't concerns exclusive to libraries, and I'm glad that such a gifted community is putting resources into exploring these questions.

No one talked about "ICTs," but one paper mentioned UGC (user generated content). I have a feeling that I speak a related language, but not the same as ACM folks here. For example, in the afternoon, we had two talks on classification, but both used the term, as far as I could tell, interchangeably with categorization. To me, as a cataloger, categorization and classification are NOT one in the same, and I admit to missing out on the finer points of the talks while getting caught up in the classing/categorizing details.

The afternoon papers talking about social tagging mentioned nothing of the socialness of tags... folksonomies were only mentioned in passing at the end of the second of the two papers on the topic, and the affective nature of tags was also only mentioned once. Again, this doesn't matter to retrieval folks, but to library and info. science folks (including knowledge organizagtion folks), it's a big deal.

One of the most interesting papers began by discussing the possibility of using Wikipedia to drive users to books. It turns out that the authors quickly focused instead on getting to Wikipedia articles from books (which seems much more straightforward), with more work in the future for getting to specific info in books. From some of my discussions at lunch, it appears that apparently folks modelling news are also interesting in identflying entities, in a way that doesn't seem dissimilar to the FRBR model. But that the way of getting to the book, especially using the surrogate (instead of the OCR for a full-text scan) remains wildly difficult.

More tomorrow.

DDC in Morocco

On the last official day of class with my Cataloging (and Classification) students at ESI, we talked about decimal classification, especially Dewey. DDC has an incredibly strong Western leaning that is often criticized. In Melvil Dewey's system, all knowledge (Western and otherwise) is divided into 10 classes. Each class has 10 sub-classes, and each of these sub-classes also has 10 sub-classes. The numbers can be meaningful beyond that, though, and usually the longer the DDC number, the more detailed the classification.

Of the religion class (the 200s), there is one subclass for religions that are non-Christian (290s). With my cataloging students, we took a look at the section on Islam. The students were pleasantly surprised to see that it's possible to do some number building to make some very "close" or detailed numbers for a variety of Muslim scholars' works. We easily came up with a few very meaningful numbers that had about six digits after the decimal.

The numbers we generated were admittedly long. However, scholars' names were possible to class, and the number-building was adequate. My students were impressed with the system, and frankly, so was I. I know that Jewish communities have created a Jewish decimal classification scheme, and that work is underway to adapt and expand DDC in some Arab-speaking libraries (in Egypt, for one). There decidedly is a need for projects like these, especially when classing a large religious collection.

If an average library from these parts chooses to use straight DDC, it's still going to be able to meet user need to a very admirable and even surprising extent for religion. Well done, DDC editors!