Delighted to find out that my paper on the axiologies of the anti-collection was chosen for presentation at the Library Research Seminar V in Maryland this October. This one isn’t about theories or practice theories, for a change! But it’s ironic to think that I presented at Library Research Seminar I way back in 1996 and never even tried to publish the resulting paper, though it was actually a fairly novel look at how websites about the Civil War “competed,” congregated,” and “cooperated.” Interestingly, I’m still working on another aspect of the same problem, though I’ve contextualized it much better since then, as I have much more theory at my fingertips these days! Ah, the opportunities that students let slip through their fingers (as I like to scold my own students now when they do something exceptional and then just put it away in a drawer!)
In any case, this should be another very interesting seminar: certainly the one in Tallahassee was well worth attending, as presenters there included Elfreda Chatman, Corinne Jorgensen, and Gary Radford, to name a few that I recall.
Interesting that I didn’t come across Perrow’s piece “On Not Using Libraries” while I was at Syracuse, though I certainly read much of his other work, especially his books on Complex Organizations and Normal Accidents. I think this is probably explained by the fact that the libraries article appeared in an obscure conference-related journal back in 1989, when there was no Web to pick up these pieces (pun intended, as I found the reference to the article on the JESSE listserv just now, thanks to a provocative poster in the Netherlands, and I was easily able to find the article itself online).
His point is even more pointed today, obviously. If I were to read everything that interested me on a professional level, I would be spending my whole life in my virtual library here. (And with no personal or pleasure reading at all!)
So the idea of “hiding” things from the people who would otherwise be obsessed by them is a provocative one: it’s so “anti-library” that it grates on me, and yet it makes a great deal of sense….
Well, my AERA paper went over well: our excellent discussant in the session made some helpful comments, and people appeared to find it intriguing, though a little “different” from the other papers presented. Conceptual papers rule!
My favorite moment, though, was when I explained that my research specialty was citation analysis and asked for a show of hands by anyone who kept track of their own citation counts. Talk about asking for intimate details: maybe I should have gotten IRB approval before doing that….
Going to the American Educational Research Association conference in Denver to present my expanded theory functions model in one of the “Education for the Professions” sessions there. It’s a huge conference, and I only have about 15 minutes to present, but I was lucky to get accepted, as they receive about 10,000 submissions each year. (Unbelievable, but that’s what the acceptance letter said!)
After all the years of researching these practice theories, and summarizing them into multiple case studies, what it comes down to is basically one slide: my model of the “social life of theories” which has changed dramatically since the much simpler version in my dissertation.
Well, I hope to get some good comments on that slide, at least!
Heavens, I haven’t been reading enough fiction lately, what with all these teaching and tenure things going on. How could I have missed Stephen Graham Jones’s Demon Theory: a pop culture-ish horror novel with footnotes?!
Must get this immediately: may be able to use the footnotes!
(Oooh, the tenure tentacles must have sunk in very deeply, to have thought of that!)
The thing with submitting to top-tier journals is that one often gets top-tier reviewers. The altitude is pretty thin up here, and I think I might need a little more oxygen, because now I suspect from the comments that my recent reviewers included at least one major figure that I would never have dreamed of asking to critique my work. Interesting.
But it’s easy to hallucinate these things when you’re climbing…
Hmm, the noted theorist Robert Sternberg is coming to OSU as their new provost. That has to be good news for the Edmon Low library: there may be multiple intelligences, but there is only one academic library. Even undergraduates should enjoy Dr. Sternberg: after all, he came up with the triangular theory of love! (Though that’s not quite what they may think….)
Although it’s often said that faculty have little respect for administration (that whole “herding cats” thing in an entry below), I have tremendous admiration for Dr. Gerard Clancy, the physician who is president of the OU-Tulsa campus. Dr. Clancy not only talks the talk, he walks the walk in terms of bringing better health care through community medicine initiatives to the Tulsa area, despite the enormous difficulties inherent in doing so in the state of Oklahoma.
In fact, where is his MacArthur grant, people?
And the “practice theories” that I’ve been studying over the past few years have practical consequences.
The case of Dr. Steven Hatfill, for example, was aggravated by the “theories-in-use” by the FBI and others regarding who was responsible for the famous “anthrax letters”….
I don’t know whether I’m more pleased or appalled that this came to my attention via a former student’s posting a link to it on Facebook rather than via my colleagues on our faculty listserv.
