Antiquarians in the Age of E-everything (e-books, e-readers)

Apple’s iPad was unveiled about 2 weeks before the San Francisco Antiquarian Book Fair. The latter event might almost look anachronistic at a time when e-readers seem to be the “último alarido de la moda….tecnológica,” certainly with more potent/newer technologies to come. And yet, for the avid collector/bibliophile, the bi-annual event held in the City by the Bay on even numbered years, was a “gran deleite visual” not easily reproduced in hand portable devices.

Some items seemed out of reach, no doubt: Bruce Weber’s O Rio de Janerio ranged from $1,800 for a signed edition to a mere $500 for the most affordable. I had gathered enough strength (and credit) to buy that one, but it was gone when I went back the second day!

Weber’s ventures into Iberoamericana may be lesser known than the highly seductive and charged images of sexually ambiguous men and women, but it's there, like the photo of the Chavela Vargas for her live 1994 concert in Madrid, after she had been (re)discovered by the Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar.

You had to look closely to find other rare Iberoamericana, and after browsing casually the first day, I went back (obsessed?) for a second round with lots of notes, not taken in any “dispositivo electrónico,” but done the old fashion way: with pencil and paper. This is not to say that laptops and cell phones were not present at the fair. Indeed they were, and they provided a good “pasatiempo” to many a dealer as there appeared to be fewer customers than in previous years.

Hidden among the many boxes of vintage postcards was a real treasure of images from the Mexican Revolution, some of which have a library presence at Yale or Texas A&M. (Did I miss other libraries?) The one I found of a woman soldier went beyond the iconic image of the “soldadera.” Here she was, surrounded by other "revolucionarios." Some one had written the words “mujer valiente” right next to the image on a horse, proudly posing for the camera, with her pistol, rifle on hand and “carrillera” ready for the next battle. I could not help thinking of the famous song that has cemented the fame of these “adelitas.”


And yes, in the age of the GPS, the antiquarian map goes beyond left and right turns to give us an ethnographic layout of a region, in this case mid 19^th century Mexico. Even a booth with travel posters gave a peek into the exotic art of going to far away and distant places. There’s always a surprise, like the one showcasing a Buenos Aires Book Fair from the 1940s with no tango motifs and certainly no Evita!

A ring of my cell phone told me it was time to get some lunch. Once I finish with my (un)traditional taco with no chiles and no onions, I go home to update my Facebook status so all my 450+ friends can hear about my antiquarian adventure!

Images above:
1) Borges Poem

2) Spanish Civil War Poster

3) Si Adelita se fuera con otro

4) Air France Travel Poster

Language Learning 2.0

In 2007, the Modern Language Association (MLA) suggested a radical shakeup of modern language provision. Horrified at the lack of language skills and the two-tiered language and literature divide in foreign language departments, the MLA proposed that foreign language programs should evolve into a more relevant and integrated language, literature and culture curriculum.

The conclusions that the MLA came to were directly reflected in much of the theory behind CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning), a student centered, technology rich learning concept that aims to provide learners with an authentic context in which to practice language skills. The MLA's propositions were also reflected in the new scholarship of teaching and learning that uses web 2.0 as a bridge to make the process of learning more adaptive, more significant and more relevant to students today. Consequently, the new language learning 2.0 encompasses technology enhanced learning with a focus on real life situations and scenarios.

What are these language learning 2.0 tools that are being used to integrate culture and language in a realistic way into the classroom? I will cover a few tools here, before exploring how we can support the successful integration of these resources in Spanish and Portuguese departments.

The first category of tools involves web 2.0 as place- the creation of a online, collaborative classroom or interactive learning community that facilitates student immersion in the language and culture. Blogs and wikis have been used with certain success, but cool kids today are looking at Ning, a tool used to create a group space or social network. Functioning as an online classroom, Ning (which is available in many languages) gives students the opportunity to participate in a Spanish context outside the classroom, as well as making it easy for students to create and explore language through a variety of different media formats, (for example, video, audio, images and texts.)

The second category is formed by digital narrative tools. These are web based, interactive tools used to create online stories and research projects such as webquests, digital stories and videos. Students have to research and role play a story or an event in the language or add images, captions and music to narrate an online event. For extensive projects, iMovie from Apple provides a professional tool, while Jing from Camtasia is a fantastic, free and easy to use screen capturing tool (which has lots of applications in libraries too). Photostory from Microsoft memoryminer and even slide show software are tools used for digital storytelling as they provide easy ways for students to upload images, captions and narration. Audio programs such as Voicethread or Audacity allow students to add voice recordings and comments to images. These tools allow students to explore and engage creatively with the stories, events and culture of a country through the language they are learning.

What can librarians do to support these learning activities? For a start, many of these activities need original, primary sources in the target language or culture, such as images, video clips and music. Excellent sources of cultural objects are found in library databases such as Artstor and Naxos Music as well as more specific web resources, such as the videos from Jesús Alonso Regalado's guide, Pandora online music or the Europeana digital library, to name a few. Additionally, as many students or even instructors have little idea about where to find these types of resources, particularly in a foreign language, a review of online search techniques can be very useful to students. Finally, students and researchers should be reminded of basic copyright rules when they are using these primary sources in their classes, particularly if they are looking to publish student projects.

Language learning 2.0 is creative and collaborative with a growing community. Websites such as Language Box hosts examples of successful uses of technology in the classroom and is a great way to keep up with the field.

Alison Hicks
University of Colorado, Boulder
alison.hicks @ colorado.edu

Presidential message

I would like to use this space to tell about some of the discussions that took place in late November during the Fall meeting of the Latin America Northeast Libraries Consortium (LANE), hosted by Angela Carreño of the New York University Libraries. The meeting was noticeably different from previous ones because the group had previously agreed to dedicate most of the time to discussing new models and possibilities for cooperative collection development among the members.

During the day-long discussion, we learned about how small groups of libraries within LANE (Brown and Dartmouth, Columbia and Cornell, and BorrowDirect consortium members, for example) are currently exploring and even starting to implement new models of cooperation. We also took time to map the collecting areas within each institution that have or are likely to be adversely affected by budget cuts. The idea was that by identifying those areas and sharing the information, the consortium would be better prepared to coordinate future decisions about collection development priorities and directions.

We also discussed the impact that electronic books might have on our Latin American and Iberian collections, and how could those fit into new models ofcooperative collection development. It was fascinating to hear how some libraries are beginning to incorporate e-book collections in different ways. Some, for example, are encouraging and financially supporting emerging ventures in this area, hoping that their support will be an incentive for the development of better digital products in the near future. Other libraries are proceeding more cautiously and are concerned about costs aswell as about the effect that the trend might have on the future quality of their collections. Interestingly, what did not seem to be possible to answer at this point in time was whether e-books would represent a replacement or a supplement of print.

Additionally, we learned about the 'Cloud Library' pilot project currently being conducted by New York University and OCLC Research. The objective of the project is to explore the cost-effectiveness of sourcing a significant proportion of NYU's local collection through the combination of large scale digital repositories and off site, shared print repositories. We also heard about the impact that the recent study released by Ithaka S+R, "What to Withdraw? Print Collections Management in the Wake of Digitization" (available at http://bibpurl.oclc.org/web/37738) ishaving in some libraries.

I describe the nature of these discussions to the broader SALALM community because the topics are tremendously relevant to the 2010 conference theme and I would like to encourage members to propose papers, presentations and/or workshops that relate to them. Something that became immediately apparent during our discussions was that more data and analysis are necessary to implement new cooperative collection development models that can both, sustain future research and teaching, and preserve the scholarly record. If SALALM, through its committees and its individual members can help to generate some of the data and the analysis that is relevant to Latin American Studies scholarship, the organization would possibly be making a very important contribution to the field.

Fernando Acosta-Rodriguez
Princeton University Library

Salalmistas/Lanistas in London

Patricia Figueroa (Brown University) visits colleagues Geoff West (left) and Aquiles Alencar-Brayner (right) at the British Library on January 12, 2010 (following a monumental snow fall throughout the UK).

Heard it at the 2009 Gudalajara Book Fair

I had just left the Larousse stand, immersed in nostalgia at seeing the red dictionary I remember from high school. I had memorized many of the Latin phrases in the “pink section” and wrote them on the back of my general biology exam. I got an “F” and the teacher called me in to say that if I could learn those words I could pass my next exam.

¿Para qué sirven los libros? The questioning voice was loud enough I could hear it clearly over the echoes of those from the hundreds who had opted to spend a Sunday afternoon book browsing. When I turned around to see who could utter such an aberration at a book festival, I caught a glimpse of the young boy. He was probably not much older than 12 or 13 and for a moment I felt transported hundreds of miles away when I filed a similar complaint: ¿para qué sirve la doctrina?

My many quejas were in vain. I had to stay after Mass for Sunday school. But the Spanish cognate gives a much better sense of what it all was, indoctrination. My brother, five years older than I, responded to my protest: para ir al cielo. al paraíso. I was hungry and could care less about paradise, but my mother had already decided for me. One hour of doctrina… and at 12 (going on 13, I always corrected everyone) I had no say in the matter.

Perhaps I stared at the boy with such intensity that his mother held out her arm to protect him from my penetrating gaze while he questioned out loud again, ¿para qué sirven los libros? I wanted to reassure him: para ir al paraíso ….son el paraíso. I wanted to tell him that books had saved my life those endless summers when the never ending smell of onions permeated my soul and my sole refuge were the words of Steinbeck and Hemingway (which I encountered first in Spanish at the local public library). Later those of Lorca and Machado gave solace to the scorching days after toiling in the onion and cotton fields. Their lulling metaphors gave me the fortitude and comfort lacking in that Church indoctrination.

¡Para eso sirven los libros!

Photo (c) Juan Boites, EL UNIVERSAL, 2009

Using RSS for Collection Development

This first appeared in the October 2009 issue of SALALM newsletter, as part of the web 2.0 column. Please contact alison.hicks @ colorado.edu for more information.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: RSS is the most useful tool in the web 2.0 world. If you only have time to play with one tool, make it RSS. If you’re already using RSS to keep up with your favourite blogs, cartoons and cake wrecks, it’s time you considered using it for collection development too. What is RSS? RSS (Real Simple Syndication) is used to receive automatic updates from a web page. An RSS feed is simply a list of new information that appears on a website. New material is automatically gathered into one place in a feed reader, arranged to be read, skimmed or saved for later, in one format that is easy to save or send by e-mail. Content updates exist for websites, blogs, searches – everything! For more information, see the ‘RSS in Plain English’ video.

Keeping abreast of contemporary fiction is a challenge, particularly for a new librarian when it is published a foreign country. Media outlets do not always pick up new and first-time authors until they win an award and furthermore, it is becoming hard to rely on published book reviews. Owing to the economic crisis in traditional journalism, many newspapers are cutting Literary Editor positions and reducing the number of book reviews (as demonstrated by Library Journal’s initial decision to close Críticas, for example.) At the same time, a new breed of book reviewer had emerged – the literary blogger. Although many decry the rise of the ‘over-opinionated and under-qualified dilettante’, literary bloggers often provide an alternative viewpoint, picking up on many titles and authors that are ignored by the major publishing houses’ marketing.

One of the central tenets of Web 2.0 is the facilitation of communication, using the Web as a two-way conversation rather than solely as an information provider. While we are extremely lucky to be able to rely on the specialized knowledge of the SALALM libreros, librarians also need to take advantage of this paradigm shift. Subscribing to personal blogs, small-scale literary magazines and newsletters through RSS means that the Internet can be used to develop a wider knowledge of recent publications as well as a barometer to gauge cultural and literary developments from within a country.

A good place to start finding literary information is to scour regular, foreign and speciality (such as Technorati, Blogalaxia, Blogazos) search engines for literary blogs. Search for key authors, literature prizes or recent literary news to find relevant bloggers. Most bloggers also provide links to the blogs that they read, which can be mined for further examples. Other sources of information include literary-prize websites, newsletters, literary associations, journals and magazines. Recently, book review aggregators have sprung up, which can make keeping up to date even more efficient. (Culture Critic, Complete Review.) I subscribe to around 20-30 sources, which gives me insight into formal and informal literary developments in the country in question without becoming overloaded. Obviously, a certain number of articles hold no interest for me, or overlap with others, but it is easy to skim through articles, and the inevitable overlap assures me that enough bases are being covered.

I channel these feeds into one super feed through Yahoo! Pipes. For more information about how to set up a yahoo pipe, please see my mini tutorial. Look at my sources here.

Alison Hicks

University of Colorado, Boulder

New column on Web 2.0

This column appears in the SALALM newsletter. After consultation with various people, we've decided to publish it here too. Please let me know if you have any comments, questions or requests for future columns!
Alison Hicks
alison.hicks (at) colorado.edu

Hands up if you’re bored of the phrase “web 2.0” already? Who’s tired of thinking that if you’re not twittering/on facebook/creating iphone apps you’re tragically unhip? Who believes that web 2.0 is an overused, useless catchphrase that just gives students another excuse not to study and has no place in Latin American librarianship today? If you answered yes to any of these questions then this new column is for you!

Everyday we’re bombarded with journals and presentations and colleagues advocating that web 2.0 is the solution to all our problems, from student engagement to cataloguing, to world peace. Libraries are signing up in their droves to ensure that they have a facebook page and a twitter feed and if you don’t have a blog, well, you’re so twentieth century. Web twopointopia has taken over the planet- but is it worth it? Is it really the miracle solution that libraries have been looking for? And, does it really have a role in academia or in Latin American librarianship?

In this new column, I aim to explore the concept of Web 2.0 and to provide specific examples of how 2.0 can be useful for SALALM librarians today. I plan to show that there is academic value in some of these tools and to provide easy, non-technical introductions to the concepts so you can play along too. In future weeks I intend to cover how Web 2.0 is impacting book reviews and language learning tools among other things. I also want to hear what you would like to know about- so please feel free to challenge me to cover a tool or to solve a problem for you.

In this first column, I thought it would be useful to give a simple definition of Web 2.0. So, firstly, take a deep breath and forget everything that you know about Web 2.0. Because the most important concept about Web 2.0 is that it isn’t a thing, a tool or a trend that is limited to technology; rather, it is a state of mind. There are five main characteristics that define the state. Web 2.0 is collaborative because its ease of use ensures wide participation that depends on teamwork rather than individualism. It is communal because web 2.0 creates empowering connections between people with similar interests. It is creative because it uses and reuses material in novel ways. It is unControlled because there is not one centralised power controlling the web. Finally, and most importantly, web 2.0 is a conversation that changes us from passive to active consumers, giving us an online voice. It is for these reasons that Web 2.0 is a powerful force in society today, and has a growing role in academia and libraries.

Web 2.0 is permeating other areas of our lives too. Tivo, the digital video recorder is a great example of the 2.0 mindset. Traditionally, TV provided a package of information. Passive consumers had little flexibility about when or how they watched programs. With TIVO, however, live TV can be paused and shows are automatically recorded. TV companies are giving up control. Similarly, business is becoming more aware of 2.0. Companies used to be strictly hierarchical with all communication strictly monitored. They expected consumer brand loyalty. However, the most flexible businesses are giving up some of that control to enable a two-way conversation between the consumer and the producer. Zappos, the online shoe seller enables every service representative to have as much power to solve customer problems as the CEO. Wordpress, the blogging software, opened up its online support forum. This shows that it has glitches in its software but it also enables a faster response time and glowing testimonials. These examples show that Web 2.0 is changing markets, consumers, employees and companies. For these reasons, web 2.0 is much more than just a tool. I hope that the following columns will show how we can tap this sentiment in Latin American librarianship.