Spam, Spam, Eggs and Spam..

"I don't like spam!"

I don't of course, and neither do you, but this isn't a general spam rant. This is a specific one. But more about electronic communication.

There is no doubt in my mind, and I experience this every day at work, and elsewhere, that face to face communication has become an almost archaic way of communicating, and many have lost the ability to address others with respect and kindness. I blame electronic communication for this. The informal cyber world has no facial expressions, body language, or the ability to speak back, thus it is easy to send useless communication, or be rude to anyone, because they are not a real person. When you deal with machines, not people, social graces go out the window. Someone may post an incredibly inappropriate comment on a blog or forum that they would never have the moxie to say to someone's face. Or, in my case, someone may just send out an incredibly useless email to masses of individuals, feigning friendliness and interest, cluttering inboxes everywhere, when this person knows NO ONE they are sending the email to and is seeking nothing but personal gain from other's naivety.

On this very day, the first day of Spring.. happy Spring everyone by the way. Wouldn't it be cool if the egg thing were real? If really, only one time in the entire year you could stand an egg on it's side? I missed my chance to kid myself since the correct time to try would have been when the sun crossed the equator at 1:48am EDT this morning (Universal Standard Time - 5 hours + 1 hour for daylight savings). But I digress.

I received my first irritating email from someone who obviously sent the message to everyone on Blogger, and God knows where else. This email insinuates that a person read my blog and liked it. In reality it is nothing more than a self-promoting request, disguised as a false compliment, to have me post his blog on mine.

Here is the message:

"Hi Ginny A. Roth,
I just came across your blog "Manual Focus" blog and liked it very much.
I thought i should let you know about my new blog "Slideshows for your website and Blogs"
link: yeah right i'm posting this link...
My blog basically consists of slideshows which fall in 12 different categories.
If you like any of the slideshows, you are welcome to embed it in your own blog.
-anuj
Do not be born good or handsome, but be born lucky."

So.. the Anuj fellow, obviously never read my blog or he/she (whoever) would have commented IN the blog and told me why he liked it. He also would have realized his slideshows do not fit the content of my blog which is not about showcasing other people's stuff unless it has such artistic or personal significance to me that I would go out of my way to share it with everyone. And here's some advice, as much as I love being addressed by my whole name, it wreaks of lack of effort to even remotely sound legitimate. You may as well sign your name "Publisher's Clearinghouse" if you are going to put so little effort into your scheme. (And what the hell does that saying mean after the signature?)

For all of you Anujs out there, stop sending this crap and cluttering up inboxes. When you send email with lies for your own shameless self-promotion you are communicating with human beings, not machines. Some of us aren't lucky enough to have your missive go into the junk mail box so we have to waste our time reading and deleting. I have to wonder, do you lie to people's faces the way to do in your mass email or do you avoid actual human contact knowing you will be labeled a fraud?

England Journal Part Deux

I got my England prints back from Apple today. I was really excited until I remembered that I had overslept and nearly missed my flight to London and was in such a panic that I ran out of my apartment without my camera. Get it? I'm a photographer and I went to England without my camera.

So about 5 days into the trip I decided to buy a disposable. Two actually. I live dangerously.
So one day I shot both roles within a 1 mile radius. Very dynamic. London Bridge, the Tower of London from about two angles, Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, the subway, a pigeon IN the subway, several cathedrals which have names that are unbeknownst to me, traffic, and of course.... "Look kids! Big Ben! Parliament!"

That's about it for over a week in London.

I got them processed on CD when I got back to Virginia and they were all grainy and pixely -- meeting all my expectations of disposable camera picture quality. So before I sent copies to my friend Dianne, who I traveled with, I photoshop'd them to get rid of speckles, dust, hair, my thumb... It was then I realized that I needed prints for my journal so I uploaded them to iPhoto.


I was excited until I remembered that. I just finished looking through them and I'm pretty disappointed. They're bad. Real bad. Why did I go to sleep at 2am when I had to get up at 3am?! Moronic.

Anyway, the pictures will still help produce a nice journal, for which I have no more roadblocks preventing me from creating. Except the fact I don't have any nice photos. God they're bad. Well, some of the pictures are actually composed nicely. I guess they're not that bad, but man they aren't good.




All images © Ginny A. Roth

Angry Birds

Blue Heron
One of the only things I like about Virginia is the variety of birds. I was never a very big fan of birds. I mean, coming from New York City, the only ones I ever saw were pigeons, sparrows, crows, and starlings. But around here, it's a birdwatchers' dream.

So I decided to photograph a bird series, but I needed a theme to make it interesting. It wasn't difficult after I looked through my first few images. The one thing they all had in common is they they all looked pissed about something. Maybe it was because I was harassing them with my camera, but we've all seen birds up close and I just never realized how irritated they can look.

Woodpecker
Maybe a lot of birds look angry because it is their natural expression, but I decided the theme of my project would be angry birds. Of course they are probably not angry, but I like the idea of projecting a human feeling on them based only on what I know anger looks like. And I like the fact that birds are something I never payed that much attention to, but now I observe them very closely. I feel like it's a step toward noticing the world around me and becoming less involved with the daily have-to's in life and running around forgetting there is other life all around me.

Canadian Goose

I have a better angry goose. It's actually quite difficult to find a goose that doesn't look angry, and I recently learned they hiss. I respect them though because of how they take care of their babies, and I can't wait for them to be born on campus. Then I can shoot angry baby birds.

American Cardinal
Once I have about 10 good shots I will probably print them so I can see them as an actual series. And hopefully I won't get myself in a Tippy Hedron situation in the process.

All images © Ginny A. Roth

Tag.. You're It

I can't help but wonder how many people realize that when we search for information resources, on the Web, in a library, in a video store, etc., our search results rely on the perceptions and bias of others. There is someone out there labeling these resources for us. Everyone has an opinion, bias, impression, etc. about information, and people do not interpret or process information the same way. It is therefore not possible to be "unbiased." People generally think that being bias insinuates prejudice or unfairness, but that is not the case. Having a bias is having an opinion, whatever that opinion may be. We are all bias and our biases differ based on our life experiences. Therefore, if we are not contributing our own individual bias to the labeling of information resources, our accessibility to these resources relies solely on the few individuals in charge whose bias is contributed. Think about it.

A book in the children's section of one library may be put on a very high shelf, or young adult section, in another library because the person in charge of labeling that book does not want young children to read it even if the author intends for that to be the case. (Librarians incorporating their own opinions into what the public should/should not have access to is a whole different story). Bias is motivated my many factors such as life experience, pressure from management, education, public opinion, general perception... anything can affect bias.

A video in one store may be classified as a comedy, a drama in another based simply on opinion. A book of fiction in one bookstore may be shelved as non-fiction in another because it crosses over into both genres. These decisions must be made by someone; it is inevitable where the organization of documents and objects by subject matter is concerned.

I know that when I search for photographs online or in an image archive I have an especially hard time if I don't know the photographer's name or the title of the photograph. Art is so subjective it is guaranteed that the archivist, artists, and researcher will view and interpret the object differently. We can't be expected or instructed to think like others, so we search using terms that we are familiar and comfortable with. However, unless they thought of it too, we won't find what we are looking for.

Although it is inevitable, I find it unsettling that the bias of the few dictates how resources are labeled on the Web and in libraries, image databases, museums, bookstore and video shelves, archives, and any other resource provider. This concept is so vast it is worth mentioning that this bias also decides what rating a movie gets, what warning labels go on CDs as well as the genre in which they are classified (remember Columbia Records used to list Pink Floyd as Heavy Metal and Bryan Adams as Easy Listening?) Even radio stations decide what is an "oldie," which last week, I swear, was Depeche Mode on some DC station.

There are two important ideas to take away from this. Just being aware of this eventuality should make the public ask more questions and preferably become less complacent with inadequate search results. Just because something is labeled one way doesn't make it right or wrong. What it does is affect our accessibility to the document. Someone else's bias should not impede our ability to access information. We can ask if we don't see what we need, and we can be aware that what we seek is out there, but may not be labeled in a way that we, as individual thinkers, would label it.

Until very recently, there was no way of expressing individual perceptions about documents to facilitate better search results. Whoever was responsible for labeling a book was responsible for the accessibility of that book. Thanks to Web 2.0 (I wish I could re-label that) and the age of social tagging, the power has leaked to the public where individuals supply their own tags to improve accessibility to documents. Although the issue of relying on taggers (the hopefully educated masses who label our stuff) largely remains in the non-cyber world (meaning, I don't think we will see many libraries or bookstores asking their patrons how they would describe or shelve their material) there are a growing number of of Web sites that allow social tagging and can help the public search and identify documents for which they can then go and find a physical copy.

For instance, what if in your local library you want to research heart problems, but they have cataloged those books using the term "cardiology." Your search will not yield any results. However, if you search a book-related Website, such as Library Thing (and check out their tag cloud) that uses social tagging, the odds are that someone else has added the more popular term "heart" to a book that would fulfill your search needs. One can then get the title, author, etc. from the site and find the book at a library or bookstore. The same thing can happen with any document. The idea is that the public generates tags for the rest of the public.

If you browse Flickr, you may find an image you interpret in a way that it has not yet been interpreted. Or maybe you think that it should be described at its most literal level. Either way you can add your own tag, and subsequently assist anyone else who may search for the image using the same tag you would use. So you don't necessarily need to be in the throws of research to tag. You can simply go online and browse resources, be it books, videos, documents, photographs, etc., and add tags that are based on your own interpretations. Yes, the conglomeration of social tags makes the number of tags very extensive and can lead to some inappropriate tagging (I need not say more). These are definitely valid arguments against Folksonomy (the official term). But I believe the positives outweigh the negatives. The fact remains that social tagging allow for a collaborative environment of opinions, interpretations, and perceptions of the public, not just those in charge of labeling information for the public, therefore providing a collective input that increases the likelihood of documents being identified and accessed by anyone.

Here are two photography-related initiatives that will no doubt promote and popularize the use of social tagging. At least they sure have with me the more I use them. So have a look! Check out incredible photography, perform searches, add tags of your own, and see how you can contribute to the accessibility of information.

Flickr Commons and the Library of Congress Pilot Project

Smithsonian Photography Initiative

England Journal

I'm working on a few book projects at once, which is slowing me down from getting very far on any of them. My England journal is one which is going particularly slow, but I think I finally have a grip on it. At the very least I have the essential ingredients for this one

• Archival book with black pages (which I prefer over white)
• Ephemera from the trip including train tickets, receipts, museum guides and numerous pamphlets and brochures from exhibits, the bookbinding class, field trips, and library excursions
• Digital images, which I still need prints of
• My WAY OUT decal

I must note here that I dig the Way Out signs in the subway. Not "exit"... just "Way Out." It's so exact. And it makes me think of the Flintstones episode when the aliens come to Bedrock and sing "Way out, WAY out. Up in the sun it's WAY out... " Dianne and I sang it while we commuted. So there.

• Photo corners
• My UHU glue stick
• Lots of book and manuscript illustrations and pictures
• A moleskine full of hotel horror stories, sketches of British things, phrases that I found terribly amusing, a rant about missing Ricky Gervais, and oh so much more.
  

I would like to find a nice balance between words and mixed media. I love writing and I can't do an artist journal without actually journaling. Glad I kept writing while I was over there. In between eating all those Kit Kats and hotel hoping I'm surprised I had time.

In any case.. I came, I went, I scanned. Stay tuned.

Who Am I?

I don't know.. I'm still trying to figure it out for myself. But I figure I should put the basics in this missive and maybe it will shed some light on the mystery.

I'm originally from Brooklyn and somehow found myself in the DC area about 5 years ago. I have a Masters in Librarianship with a focus in Archives and Special Collections - primarily photography/preservation which is my true passion.

I work as the Image Collection Manager at George Mason University, but I hope I can advance to a larger collection of prints and artifacts in a large museum or museum library that will serve the public. Still looking for my chance - nationwide. I'm willing to move, I like to explore.

As cliche as it sounds, I do love to travel and hope to take a vacation this year - anywhere. Last year I attended the London Rare Book School and it was incredible. I learned about the history of bookbinding which, to a nerd librarian like myself, is fascinating. The year before I took off a few weeks to go to Rochester, New York to attend a Photography Preservation seminar at the George Eastman House, sponsored by the Image Permanence Institute (IPI) and Ryerson Univeristy (where I applied for a second Masters in Photo Preservation/Collection Management and GOT IN, but turned it down to work instead. The jury is still out on whether that was a good idea or not). It was one of the most amazing trips I've ever taken. Not on a relaxing scale.. but more than anything else it inspired me to pursue photo collection management. A seminar I took in Rochester, The Identification of Photographic Print Processes, is actually being offered in the Rare Book School in Charlottesville this year. I may take it again. James Reilly from IPI, who taught it in Rochester, is teaching it in Charlottesville in June. He was probably my favorite speaker, and the one from whom I learned the most.

I don't argue that DC has a lot to offer aside from the National Mall. I love to explore exhibits locally at the Smithsonian,the Corcoran and two of my favorites, Phillips Collection (where I was a museum guard a year ago!) and the National Museum for Women in the Arts. Outside the museum world, Eastern Market fills my soul's need for Bloody Marys, hand made eclectic jewelry and art, and surrounding pubs provide Smithwicks and Chimay on much needed days, of which there are many.

As long as I'm sucking up to DC, I may as well suck up to some other local areas I like such as Shirlington, where there is an art house theater and a nice choice of restaurants, Bethesda, a little out of the way but a nice after work, get tipsy kinda town, Old Town, a beautiful, historical area with the Mason Temple on one end, shops, restaurants and Irish pubs in the middle, and the Potomac on the other end, and, as long as driving isn't an issue, Shenandoah.

I'm always looking for creative outlets to feed my soul, whether it is art classes, lectures, conferences.. anything that will open my mind, inspire me to create, and increase my knowledge. I will be attending the ARLIS/NA and VRA hosted Summer Educational Institute at James Madison this year in July, and I am excited about that because I got my employer to pay for it. I guess I always feel a little unsettled because there is so much out there that I want to do, any of it could be the one inspirational epiphany I need to get me on the right path.

I like to run when I'm not sitting. I completed a marathon once. Once. But I'm not quite so motivated these days. Oh, and I have a soft spot for fashion and, like most women, have a shoe fetish. I can't help it. I'm from NYC and, well, blame the extra X.

Till later

Not So Super Tuesday

I am not happy with the election results, I'll just leave it at that. I can't believe how agitated I feel. This could end up being the biggest election dilemma I've yet faced. The whole thing is painful to watch. I'm not sure what irritates me the most, Wolf Blitzer's stuttering, CNNs touch board which I'm afraid if they keep touching is going to zoom right into my bedroom at which time they will single me out as one of the 70% of the 48% of the 25% of people that have no idea how a caucus is run, or the actual candidates themselves. I don't propose this turn into a political blog, but it's staggering how American politics has turned into the most unfortunate reality TV. Personally, I prefer the weather channel. Speaking of which..

...we are having a severe thunder storm and tornado warning. Cool. I love weather. It is so dramatic and motivated. In the event I am sucked into a twister while I'm writing I'll do my best to record how it feels in the vortex of a giant water spout. I didn't start this blog for nothing.

I have ideas how I can take this blog into a not unmeaningful direction. Jason, my first blog commenter, (I wish I had a prize for you but alas, I just have this call out), suggested I dig deeper, and I think that is good advice. Of course that means I may have to forfeit the usually inevitable discussion about the unbearable lightness of being me.. including the ubiquitous anecdotes about my cat, relationships, and recent museum visits, ramblings about missing Brooklyn (where I hail from), additional ramblings about how I wouldn't miss Northern Virginia if and when I move back to New York City, a humble admission that I am perpetually looking for a new job because I have yet to find one that feeds my soul, and another that I just sent myself a message on Facebook.

Peace Out.

Spring is in the Air

It's strange how a simple change in the weather can change ones mood. I smelled Spring today in the first gratifyingly warm breeze of the new year. I highly recommend daffodils to ring in the new season.

Side Note: I prefer to ring in seasons rather than years. Yes, I 'ring in' more than most, but each new season does mean a new celebration. I think we need to allow ourselves more reasons to celebrate in life.

That said, anyone can ring in Spring and support a cause we are all affected by, one way or another. The American Cancer Society is currently holding daffodil campaigns across the country. Please check it out. You can purchase fresh cut flowers or bulbs to plant. Daffodils are a true symbol of Spring and will make the end of winter (for those that are freezing like me) that much more bearable. But most important:

"Donations received through the Daffodil Days program enable the Society to offer free programs and services that help people fight cancer with courage and optimism, while providing physical and emotional assistance and financial information to ease the cancer experience.Additionally, daffodil contributions provide the Society with much-needed dollars to fund groundbreaking cancer research, educate people about the importance of cancer prevention and early detection, and advocate for meaningful public health policies that benefit the community." - The ACS Web site

Don't let the whole punxy phil conspiracy get you down. Of course winter is going to be 6 more weeks. I mean, isn't is always? But that doesn't mean you can't start ringing in Spring now. Cheers.

March 14, 2008, Daffodils in full bloom









Image © Ginny A. Roth

March - The 31 Day Sunday

I'm no longer a blog virgin, but still not convinced there are any advantages to expressing myself on the Web. I criticized blogging in library school, but now even my fellow criticizers are blogging and IMing and social networking. Meh.

So I decided I wasn't being fair and I should give it a shot. I have no idea where this blog is going, but life is what happens, right? I am skipping over the first 35.5 years, but if life continues to happen, I'll share the interesting stuff here. I guess this is the best way to start one of these. And so.. I live.