Learnin' Stuff

I was at the 40th anniversary party/slash 9th edition book launch for Our Bodies, Ourselves, yesterday. There were a lot of amazing women from all over the world who spoke about their work in women's health as global partners of OBOS.

I was knitting an afghan square, not taking notes, and the event was streamed and will be archived, so I won't say much even though there were many cool moments I could highlight.

One thing that did strike me, and then made me wonder at how striking it was, was Miho Ogino, who edited the Japanese edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves (published in 1988 and now out of print, she said, but not before inspiring many other women's health books), mentioning that, unlike in many countries, there was no religious backlash to the book's content in Japan.

She said this was because Japanese society is not strongly religious, and did mention that there was some cultural resistance, as of course there may be anywhere.

"Imagine no religious backlash!" I thought.

And then I thought how unfortunate it is that the default assumption is that religious figures would naturally object to frank information about women's health and sexuality. Can't have people knowing stuff about stuff.

Speaking of frankness, another recurring theme was how tough it is in some languages and societies to even find words for some of these topics. There might literally not be a word for something, or the one commonly used might be inherently associated with shame or secrecy--obviously not what you're going for when you're trying to present facts about health.

Anyway, a very interesting day.

Speaking of Second Life...

This post by Anna on FWD/Forward informs me that there's a Helen Keller Mythbusting Day coming up on June 19th.

It's going to be Helen Keller Day in Second Life, with events at four in-world locations including a keynote speech, a fashion show, Braille chat, exploring with a virtual guide dog, and lots more. This highlights some of the interesting ways that the internet generally, and virtual worlds specifically, can provide new ways to make things accessible to people with different needs.

I also note in Anna's post the phrase "If I played Second Life, I would be all over this." So it's definitely not just me--there's a general perception that SL is something you kind of need to be regularly engaged in in order to get anything out of it.

I'm not sure if my idle thought about whether it might be possible to use it more casually like web-conferencing software would really work. I was thinking more about it, and really, the sign-up process may be a bit too intensive for most people to feel that it's a worthwhile investment if they're only planning to, I don't know, attend a workshop on Resource Description and Access or something.

You have to download the software and set up an account, which is also true with, say, Wimba or other programs that allow for real-time webinars and the like, so that's not particularly onerous.

But then you also have to create your avatar, which can be a time-consuming process if you want to get your hair just the right shade of purple, and then you have to learn how to move around and travel from place to place and interact with other people, and it's not especially hard, but it's not necessarily a direct transfer of previously held skills. I know it took me some time to start figuring out how to get places and find things.

It's like navigating the internet, but not exactly.

So it's one thing to say "download this software and then log into this online conference room to get audio of a speech and some Powerpoint slides and you can also chat with other people there," and another to say "download this really huge program and create a virtual representation of yourself and then log into this online world and locate this in-world location to get audio of a speech and some Powerpoint slides with a much prettier background environment and you can also see representations of the other people there that you can chat with."

I think Second Life could add something to an online conference, but I don't know if it adds enough that it would be easy to convince people to sign up and learn to use it just for that, if they didn't have a need for any accessibility features it might offer.

But since I already have an account, I'm totally in favor of having an RDA workshop there. And of course Helen Keller Day, which sounds pretty cool.

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Conference Advise

I would like to pass along the following handy tip from A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette:

Write your twitter name on your ALA Midwinter nametag so that attendees can easily identify fellow library conference tweeters. This will allow for face-to-face tweeting, eliminating the need for awkward eye contact and talking with other humans. #alamw10

Niiiiice. I will not be doing this myself because I'm not actually going to ALA Midwinter (I'm just here for the pre-conference), but it sounds like a good way to solve that irritating eye contact problem.

Another thing I find helps with that is to sit in a corner with my computer, reading and writing blog posts.

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Lunchtime Notes

I'm on lunch break at the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services pre-conference before ALA Midwinter, and so far I have learned the following things:

1. Gee whiskers, I wish I'd had a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)-focused education! I'm sort of lurking on the edges of the science world as an English major in a medical library (I have no idea what you're talking about!--but I can find some information on it for you), and now I feel as if I've missed out.
2. I feel a strong desire to get into the Gaming in Libraries trend (largely because I want to play games), but need to think about how to make it work for our particular audience. (I didn't actually just learn that, I've known it for a while.) Also, I think of myself as a gamer, but since I've mostly done pencil-and-paper roleplaying games, I'm not really part of the larger gaming culture in the U.S., in which video games rule. I feel as if I've missed out.
3. These delicious clementines plus a scone I saved from the breakfast array makes a perfectly good lunch that I don't have to go outside for. Nevertheless, I feel as if I've missed out...on spending money. Not all missing out is bad.