Friday, October 31, 2008

Error 2.0

I've been writing lately about Millennials as well as Library 2.0, and it occurred to me that there's one area in Computerland that really needs some 2.0 attention. You know it, I know it, we all know it. It's those Dreaded Messages from Computers. You know what I mean. "You are low on disk space." "Memory error." "Error in line 27." "Mistake in line 9." "Illegal operation."

"Illegal operation" is a good one. So, I think. I've committed an illegal operation. What law have I broken? Are you sending the Computer Police to get me? Do I have the right to remain computing? Or was this a surgical operation I've unwittingly committed? Are we talkin' the American Medical Association here?

How about some helpful error messages? I wanted to call this post "Help 2.0," although I have to admit that online and network help has gotten better in the last few years. I can often find what I need to know in the help, local or on the internet (although it's sometimes under a heading that would never occur to me.) I still make notes in my computer books when I find the answer, because sometimes it takes awhile to find it (or, in the case of our reference desk computer, it gets re-imaged every so often, and I have to change all of the Microsoft-preferred or My-Place-of-Work-preferred defaults and settings back to the Marianne-preferred settings. There's nothing like having your own name underlined because Microsoft thinks it's misspelled.)

What would a helpful error message be like? It would not only tell you what you did, but either what you should do to fix it, or how you can do better next time. What do you think of these reflections on what I think recent error messages have been trying to tell me?
  • Oh, you silly! Don't you know you can't have that many tabs open? It's really more than this poor program (or machine, or whatever) can handle. I know that YOU, with your superior human brain, can deal with this, but your poor, benighted computer really can't cope. So next time, no more than six or seven tabs at a time, ok? Especially if you're going to be playing music, downloading pdfs, and all of that other fancy stuff.
  • Oh, bother. I've run out of memory again. No, really, it's me, it's not your fault. How were you to know my true limitations? Even I can't admit them all. So please, could you shut me down for a bit, and try again a little slower? I'd really appreciate the rest.
  • Oops! Um, I don't know how to break this to you, but there's a new version of this program available, at it can handle more things than I can. I know, there's no way that you'd know this. If I could, I would have told you. Really. I wish they'd set me up to do that. But I only hear about it after the fact. So if you go to the Help and look under "New Stuff That No One's Told You," they'll have the answers there.
  • Owie! Oh, I really blew that one, didn't I? I've been doing fine all this time, and you had no reason to suspect I would fail you this time. So sorry. I'll try not to let it happen again. So if you sneak around the back and save what you were doing, you should be fine.

My favorite help message of all time (in response to an acutual error) was on our old mainframe network, back at the Dawn of Time. "You have invoked Help," it began. Well, duh, I thought (although it may have been back before "duh" came into the common language.) If you think I need to be told that I'm asking for help, our relationship isn't starting off on a good footing, is it? Like the washing machine repairman who asked my mother, awash in suds, if she was sure that the machine was plugged in.

On this Halloween, let's see if we can invoke some helpful Help and error messages.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Mid-term break

It's mid-term break, so we're catching our breath a bit, and I'm ordering books for my subject areas (business and economics.) We use Blackwell's Collection Manager for a lot of our book selection, and can order Ebrary versions of electronic books. It's interesting to decide on an individual title level - should I request this book in electronic format, or not? A number of the titles I request aren't available electronically yet, or on the platform we've chosen. But I come up with a few each time I go in, and then I think. Is this the sort of book that will get a lot of use, and having it electronically will be a Godsend to patrons? Is this the sort of book that needs some "digesting," and not be in heavy demand, so it would be better to have it in paper? And I know that every title I order as an ebook won't be available to patrons in the rest of our consortium (unless they came into our library - I think they could use it then.) While these are not "life or death" decisions, they are challenging, and not something any of us contemplated back in the olden days in library school.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Google Books and computer tips

The Chronicle of Higher Education on October 13 had an article about university libraries participating in Google Books that have been building a backup to Google Books. They've unveiled it as HathiTrust (pronounced hah-TEE), from the Hindu word for elephant. Says Bradley C. Wheeler, Chief Information Officer at the Indiana University system, "Elephants remember, elephants are large, and elephants are strong."

My favorite computer tip this week comes from David Pogue in the New York Times, who recently blogged on "Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User." Did you know that on pc's you can use the Control key and the Plus key (Ctrl +) to enlarge the text of a web page? How many pages do we see that have tiny fonts? This is one tip I can use!

Friday, October 10, 2008

More on Millennials

In the midst of teaching classes this week (accounting, journalism, and economics), I can share another item on Millennials. Wayne Bivens-Tatum, is the Philosophy and Religion Librarian at Princeton University, and his Academic Librarian blog has several posts tagged with Millennials, including a recent review of Mark Bauerlein's new book The Dumbest Generation (Wayne doesn't think they are.)

I'm off to do my last two presentations for fall semester (at least, those that are scheduled so far.) This term I've done hands-on sessions in our building, online demos on pc's in other buildings, one online Mac-based demo in another building, and this morning a road show with no computer. So I'm running the gamut.

Friday, October 3, 2008

Some Views of the Google Generation

My local academic library consortium is planning a discussion next month on the current generation of undergraduate students - Millennials, Generation Y, the Google Generation, etc. One of my colleagues has recommended this article from Inside Higher Ed: Understanding Students Who Were 'Born Digital'. And our library director shared with us the NELINET environmental scan, which has a couple of articles on Generation Y and the Google Generation. What our today's students doing, and expecting from us? What is changing in how students do research? This should be an interesting topic for discussion.