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Simply put, it’s madness: packing, preparing for interviews (and they just keep coming), then having to answer questions either face to face or by phone, and dealing with other, more personal affairs—unquestionably, the latter one is not a subject to depict in this blog.
In the rest of the time, in addition to reading articles of philosophy, psychology, education, and—of course—writing, I continue to look at lib lit. As for the last one, there is a plethora of research that– as my chance to discuss with several kinds of librarians that I would like to meet on a regular basis is currently slim– substitutes for an understandably, more desirable professional contact. And all of a sudden I realize that the time seems to have compressed to the point that I live now with the perception that there is no time for anything else: one task continues with another, without my having any restful intermezzo.
It’s funny how some people undermine themselves by displaying behaviours of greed when they see that you could give them some business somewhat regularly. Specifically, I used the services of a print shop for some personal business (I will leave other details aside), the last time charging me $0.06 per copy, although it was clearly specified in their ad that for more than a thousand copies one is charged $0.04 per copy. When I made this observation in my second to the last use of their services, they have changed the figures, and I gladly gave them the benefit of the doubt. This time, though, I didn’t– justifiably so, and, since I do not believe that being too assertive is always the best approach to solve problems, I paid the full amount, promising myself that I really do not have a reason to go to that printshop anymore (as I’m leaving the city sooner rather than later).
I found Charles Taylor’s article, “The dynamics of democratic exclusion,” interesting in the sense that he sees that people (whether majorities or minorities) in simultaneously democratic and multicultural societies operate politically on two not-so-mutually-exclusive models: the procedural one (we look at each other from the most basic perspective, as humans, but we ignore what really makes us individuals) and the Herderian model (we are complementary to each other precisely because our differences). First, he describes patterns of exclusion of minorities in different Western societies (Germany, Canada), before he proposes his two-prong model. He goes on to say that the two models share linguistically some elements with the “postmodernist” discourse (namely, some of its terms seem to be semantically close to those used by procedural liberals—seemingly ideological enemies of the “postmodernists,” but it would have been interesting if Taylor had come up with some examples to better support his assertion. What Charles Taylor actually does is to clearly define terms, propose an ideological model of how a Western democracy should work, admit that the matters can get worse before they might get better, but he ends up with some gracious generalities (e.g. “we must fight free of some of the powerful philosophical illusions of our age,” pag. 156).
Matching up your text with theirs— the essence of an employer’s request for hiring academic librarians. It is up to the candidates to perform a close reading of a job ad, and figure out– and express that in their response– if their skills correspond to what employers are looking for. But what bothers me is that if the candidates do not have any practical experience, since they are applying for one resident program or another, they will likely have a vague idea to perform that critical close reading, a reading that allows them to include the expected tags, or rather categories within which particular examples must be given to reflect the sought-after skills.
So it all comes down to reading well—librarians’ fundamental skill, intimately linked to their majestic ability to put a written or an oral message into their audience’s words. Speaking of audiences, but changing gears, I had the chance to read some of my colleagues’ pieces of writing that they have posted on a sort of blog. Rather unsurprised by how well most of them write, I could not help comparing my writing skills to theirs, having realized, now more than ever, that I have to master the idioms and, constantly, absorb new words in their various contexts: a titanic work—there is little doubt here.
Today, 19 June 2008, I have looked for what I believe to be relevant articles about the pros and cons of the Google Scholar, which was a daunting task. Having now those articles at hand, it is imperative that I focus on a research question leading to an information literacy lecture for ESL students. The somewhat imposed question is, what are the positive and negative aspects of using Google Scholar (GS) in researching into plagiarism? ( I am being asked to subtly convey the idea that if there are any negative aspects resulting from the use of GS, then the positive ones must be in the realm of libraries, or librarians.)
Though saddened when I have realized that I have no time to write my essay for a newsletter, I found some comfort in the thought that I could write it for a later date, at my pace. Under the pressure to ponder the texts within a limited time frame, analyze and synthesize them, and shape up a reasonably literary input, I would have come up with rambling, unfinished thoughts. Yet, one major benefit of skimming those texts is that I found, amongst many others, an evolutionary perspective on the nature of the relationship between different groups’ expressed perceptions of environmental issues and their political weight in our society. Librarians may be interested in this nature, or rather its dynamics, but I am not quite sure if they can influence it, or on which side they should be. (Well, I am allowed to guess, but I’ll keep that to myself for now.)
I have tried to find the subject heading for a concept, quite familiar though, but rather difficult to express in a few words that would describe it well. It is a concept which could be regarded from at least two facets: one’s present casts a gloom over one’s life, and, thus, one catches a straw of felicitous, past memories, as if, in moments of despair, the straw itself grows into a twig. Would it be that this psychological state touches the border between pathology and nostalgia (in the LCC lingo, the concept that I am thinking about covers simultaneously some well-defined areas of the BF and RC schedules)? Have to give some more thought to that, but, undoubtedly, that would be a difficult reference question.
So, the real job hunting has begun—it had to. Caught in my daily activities (important, though, as they relate to my imminent move), I have almost forgotten what it means to persistently look for certain librarian positions, this search being a nerve-wracking game. From this distance, and from my experience, it seems that I will most likely find something through informal channels.
Will not forget an idea, or it is perhaps a combination of several ideas leading to one, derived from my mockery of social Darwinism: it’s not the smartest, or the most capable, who survives, but the one who can easily adapt. That would not pass in the elitist circles of our so-called meritocratic society. Or would it?
Still, there is another thought I meant to put into writing these days, but it seemed so hard to pin down: I’m coining the discourse instability. To begin with, our thoughts are mostly built on words, so the more words we have stored through education, the finer is our capacity to express thoughts. Nothing new here, obviously. In writing, though, if we have the time and willingness to learn new words, we can almost perfectly tailor them to follow thoughts, since we can consult a dictionary, or a thesaurus, hoping to match words and sentences with our thoughts (at least, it is reasonable to hold this belief). What about speech? In this case, because we hardly have the capacity to remember, or remember to use, that lexical and syntactic variety that some of us can access, then we are prone to gross cognitive approximations (in the kind of societies where the written culture is so entrenched).
With the exception of wishfully knowing as many concrete nouns and verbs as we can, which is already a prowess–the educated unilinguals’ one of the finest qualities–, we may feel almost helpless in trying to reach the rest of the words, if they exist, lying somewhere in a deep, almost inaccessible well. My take is that only constant reading and, especially, writing will refine our ability to effectively tap into, or fill, that well; otherwise, we resort for groping for the only few words residing in our short term memory, as if our body, or biological self, tires if does not exercise–an apparent paradox here. That is to say, the discourse instability may reflect a lack of practice, the opposite of which (that is, practicing to stabilize the speech) only a chosen few can afford regularly. Some of them may find the social Darwinism quite acceptable.
On the road tomorrow, I will be attempting to find an idea, or a tentative research question, for a paper that I should finish writing in about ten days. How will I find a few valuable ideas for the mini-essay and, even more importantly, creatively add meat to it (that is, editing), since writing is like giving birth to a skeleton, is another kettle of fish. (Hmm, fish, skeleton, and meat—again, my undergrad English teacher would say that I lapsed into literary sin with this mixed metaphor.)
Longing for some peace for writing these days, whirls of social merry-go-around, I tend to regard some acquaintances as time reavers— so numerous and imaginative, so it seems, in taking away bits of time. Your time is a minuscule gear in a ruthless mechanism in which you are forced to fit, a small toothed wheel precisely cut by a grinning, godly Swiss clockmaker. How often, and to what extent, can you negotiate that time for yourself, to own it, without appearing selfish? This is especially awkward when people love to tell you their stories, going into details that are only relevant to them, with their assumptions that you know what they are talking about, but you hardly do.
You feel that every word you utter in a sentence, presuming you have the chance to arrive at its end, triggers a memory in your interlocutor’s mind, who is rushing to narrate it, and you suddenly realize that your sentence, though the initial netting on which they weave their little stories, becomes meaningless to you–its meaning has been appropriated. Do we read texts by appropriation? Not quite, but I will write about that some other time.
