Pure As the Driven Snow, I Tell You

I was intrigued by this post by Danah Boyd at Apophenia about name changes.

Apparently Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, has suggested (in a Wall Street Journal article that also raises some interesting points about net neutrality and the ability to 'walk away' from web services) that, in a world where everyone's youthful indiscretions are chronicled in merciless detail on the web, people will simply start changing their names when they get older, in order to break the historical link with said indiscretions.

Boyd finds this implausible, not only because legally changing your name is "a Pain in the F* Ass," but because, in a world of merciless indiscretion-chronicling which also has freely available and powerful search tools (a world, perhaps, much like our own), people would be able to find out what your prior name was anyway.

She's also talking about reputation in this post, and points out that very few people have the kind of utterly monstrous reputation that makes it worthwhile to raze the fields of one's personal history and salt the earth so nothing can ever grow again.

Most of us, while we may have some embarrassing moments that we're sorry everyone knows about (not me, of course!), also have certain achievements associated with our names.

We graduated from schools, had jobs, made friends. Rated clips on YouTube, tagged photos, maybe wrote or commented on blogs, generally built a name for ourselves in on- and offline communities. People know who we are. Some of them probably like us. We have connections.

I like this point about reputation. I think probably most of us wouldn't really want to just walk away from our pasts--even when people do change their names, often along with a life event like marriage, they're not usually trying to ditch everything associated with the name they had up until then.

I haven't ever done anything all that interesting, but anything even sort of interesting that I've done, I've done with the name I have. It would take some seriously chronicled indiscretions to make me want to break the link to the things I've done with my (totally unsullied!) reputation so far.

I may have a checkered past (although I don't!), but I'm not trying to get away from it.

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How Now, Good People?

I was fortunate to have the culturally improving experience of some free Shakespeare on the Common last night (a performance of Othello), and I came away with the bright idea that it would be fun to re-popularize the use of the phrase "how now?"

They use it a lot in Shakespeare plays, and I imagine it as equivalent to the "how are you?" of today, or more casually the "what's up?"

What's going on? What's happening? How's everything?

How now, dude?

It's short and sweet, it has a classical pedigree, and it rhymes. "How now" is the check-in phrase of the future, I can feel it.

It's not just for brown cows anymore.

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Another Day

Sometimes there are days where you're just not sure what you actually did. I mean, what was going on that took up all that time between when I showed up at work and when I left?

I put stickers on some volumes of journals to mark the ones we mean to discard...talked to a student about a thesis...talked to a colleague about terrifying examples of IP questions we could use in classes...wrote some emails...wrote a single print letter to an archives donor...had a couple of reference desk shifts...did a little online course on human subjects research...

I dunno. Time passed.

And now it's the weekend, and not a moment too soon. Tomorrow, we're planning to go to Shakespeare on the Common. It's going to rock.

'Cause that's Shakespeare for you.

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Pressing Health Issue of the Day

My throat is sore. I guess that's what you get when you talk for three hours straight.

At least I've done my part to ensure that another incoming class of medical students is familiar with the library's copy card policy.

The librarians are here for you, future doctors. Right by the copy machine.

I'm kidding, of course. I try to stay far away from the copy machine, lest I be unwittingly sucked into the vortex of terrifying formatting questions or toner replacement issues (mess not with the toner replacement!).

Actually, I'll be here for the future doctors next to this computer (or one much like it), thinking deep thoughts about call numbers and Medical Subject Headings, with my frowny drawn-on eyebrows giving me a misleading air of grave dignity.

I just wish I could grow a big beard to go with the eyebrows.

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You! Into the 'W's!

I've been putting call numbers on some books that don't have them pre-assigned in OCLC, and thinking sadly that we're not going to have NLM records in LocatorPlus to help out anymore.

I understand why they stopped putting NLM classification and Cutter numbers on cataloged items if they don't actually use them down there. It's extra work, and who has time to do work they don't have to these days?

It's handy to have those records as a resource, though. On the other hand, without them I'll get even more chances to classify things myself.

Ah, the heady sense of power that comes from sticking a classification on something!

Yessir, that rush is why we get into librarianship. It's like a drug.

Of course what's even more like a drug, are the drugs. Caffeine and chocolate, I mean.

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Get It On Record

I loved this moment of librarian geekiness from Anna at Future Feminist Librarian Activist, relating how she was looking at the Library of Congress Authorities one day (as one does) and looked up her own grandfather, who was there.

Nice! It must be interesting to see a name you know well from personal contexts listed in this very formal LC style for the whole world to see and copy into its catalog records.

I don't have any relatives in the LC Authorities as far as I know, but we do put some of our graduate and PhD theses in the collection, so I've come across a few names in the catalog and thought "hey, I remember that student!"

It may be sort of the same thing. A kind of putting together of pieces, something you know in one context, someone you know in another. Almost like getting a joke, in a way, though not with the funny haha aspect.

A little mental snap, things coming together to look a bit different.

Some of those students may well go on to be listed in the LC Authority Files, too. They're not related to me, though, so heck with 'em.

It's up to me to get an authority record in the LC files to bring honor to my family name!

Great, pressure.

I have also looked up my own last name in PubMed, and there are some of us in there, though again, none related to me as far as I know. But at least whoever those people are, they've got us covered so I don't have to worry about writing up a medical research project.

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Don't Email Me

Rob Lamberts, MD, on The Health Care Blog, writes about doctors receiving and responding to patient email: specifically, about why he personally doesn't do it.

Basically, it's because there's no way to be reimbursed for it, so he would be working for free, or worse:

Accepting emails from patients at this point would mean more time spent doing un-reimbursed tasks. Actually, it would potentially decrease our revenue, handling problems outside of the office (for free) instead of being paid for our services. Doing so would give us three options:

1. Working extra hours to make up for lost revenue.
2. Giving free care via email and just accepting less pay, seeing less patients total.
3. Spending less time with each patient to make up for the decreased revenue.

It's hard to argue with that logic. Many of us are in favor of getting paid for doing our jobs. I myself have been known to enjoy it from time to time.

One idea suggested by Dr. Lamberts is to charge a fee for an email consult (he suggests $20, specifying that it would need to be enough to discourage frivolous inquiries, could be applied to the cost of an office visit if one were indicated, and would have to be covered by insurance).

I could see this possibly working, although you'd have to work out how the fee would be collected. An online Email Order Form where you have to give credit card or insurance info before the message is sent would work fine, I imagine.

I found the post interesting because it acknowledges the theoretical value of email for medical practice (he is busy and would be happy to take care of questions remotely and not make patients come in if they didn't have to), but still finds it financially impracticable.

I guess the lesson is that even useful technology is no use if it costs too much.

Many of us, especially those who are familiar with both exciting technologies and economic systems in which money is exchanged for goods and services, have probably run into this concept before.

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