What about librarian philosophy?

@kronosposeidon - I would add the qualifier that it has to be visible combustion (yes to Rocket tests, yes to the internal workings of an engine). And yes, I do understand the workings of an internal combustion engine, thank you. Many political discussions can be attributed to philosophical texts (and thus books), but we understand that folks can tell the difference. Likewise I would expect a modicum of common sense to prevail with a combustion channel.

Tongue-in-cheek eh? Sorry hombre, I didn't know librarians had a sense of humour.

Overcast - whats wrong with vicious fights over Irony invocations? This site is at its best when it roils in the midst of conflict. Keeps things interesting at least. Good point on the insects though - bugs is a better channel.

90's doesn't really excite me either, but I've heard it mentioned a few times and wanted to provide a full slate of options. I may end up regretting that.

As for indigenous - I would defer to Wikipedia: "Indigenous peoples are any ethnic group who inhabit a geographic region with which they have the earliest known historical connection."

Medicine = Health + Science (and sometimes including Brain, and sometimes including Anatomy)>> ^MycroftHomlz:

medicine


Inspirational can be a subset of Happy, but hey, if you really want it then create it when you get your diamond, which at the rate you're going should be next week.

Sad can be a subset of Dark, but if you really want it, then see above^.>> ^bleedmegood:

inspirational or sad


And for @Throbbin, combustion? What would that cover? Anything where flame is involved? Because that would include most Wheels submissions (internal combustion). Also rockets, explosions, and marijuana, among others. Too broad, IMHO.

But hey, what do I know? I'm just the Sift librarian, and some people hate that channel with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns. I guess some folks fear literacy.

Here's the thing--after you watch that video, pay particular attention to the pathos being elicited, as we watch the hopes and dreams of thousands of children riding on a particular bingo ball being selected. So much emotion, designed to make the viewer ANGRY that it's come to this. But research (reported in Freakonomics and other places) has shown that every child in that auditorium is just as likely to succeed in their respective educational career, whether or not their number is called.

Say what? The authors speculate that, like so much in life, who you are is far more important than what you do. They found positive correlations between the number of books in a home and a child's long term educational success, so Blagojevich, governor at the time, ordered books for every home with children under age six. This is exactly the sort of faulty interpretation of research findings that cause so much consternation in educational reform efforts. It wasn't merely the number of books a child could read--it was the total number of books present in the household. The authors mused that such a collection transmitted a clear set of values to the child. Parents who treasured reading had children who treasured reading, and these children did rather well in testing situations. Similarly, merely the desire to improve one's current state through applying for new educational opportunities seems to be the factor in whether or not a child succeeds. I worked at a magnet high school in Chicago, and I have to be clear--the desire must come from both the parents AND the child. Parents who enrolled in the lottery to place their child in a 'safe' school against that child's wishes were sorely disappointed with the result, which usually included 27 other children (and their parents) annoyed at the disruptive element in their midst.

There are a number of reports from the Consortium of Chicago School Research (based out of the University of Chicago) which finds, quite astonishingly, that the best indicator of a student's long term success is NOT a standardized test score (which in CPS is the Prairie State, which is the ACT plus three other tests) but rather GPA. Think about that for a moment. Here you have BAD teachers in FAILING schools. I mean, that's what the movie's talking about, right? The research shows, though, that these 'bad' teachers are actually fairly good at gauging where the student is at. They're not necessarily dumbing down the material, or handing out C's for having a pulse. You would think that if they were so terrible, they'd avoid the stress of report card pick-up by passing everyone, but they don't. They do the right thing. They pass the ones who are passing, and fail the ones who are failing, and somehow this aggregate does a better job of predicting how well that student will do in life than the standardized test. That one conclusion should be studied at every school in the nation, but it seems to be ignored. Why?

Remember that joke about the guy who finds his best friend frantically looking for his wallet in the street late one night, and helps him out, but after an hour, asks, "Are you sure you lost it here?" The friend replies, "Oh, no. I lost it in the alley over there. The light's better here." That, right there, is most of what's wrong with the current fetishization of accountability in education. In order to hold schools accountable, they've chosen something that's easy to count. However, is what it's counting IMPORTANT? Accountability that doesn't count the right thing shouldn't count at all. The alternative is hard, sticky, prone to errors with few moments of identifiable triumph. In short, it makes the bureaucrats work, and Ghod help us all if they have to do THAT.

A quick statement to establish my bona fides. I was selected to participate in Teachers for Chicago, the spiritual predecessor of Teach for America. I was part of the first group of library media specialists put through the program. We were a different breed of teacher, sent to confront a new breed of student. I have worked 14 years in CPS, six in the elementary school setting, eight in high school. I have watched the rise of charter schools, and know why they're so effective--the Freakonomics folks called it. They do better because they WANT to do better, and that desire manifests with the choice to forego the neighborhood school for the charter school. But the students who wanted into the Charter school and did not are still doing well--they're just drowning in a sea of knuckle-heads, and their successes are being diluted when it comes time to rank schools in how well they prepare their students.

I've written quite a bit, because I have a lot to say. I'll see this movie when it comes out (because I'm that kind of librarian), but I'm almost certain that they'll ignore most of the new evidence that's come out indicating that charter schools don't live up to the hype (read The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch for a comprehensive view of this) and that the problems confronting us seem almost insurmountable. They certainly defy easy metrics that would allow standardized testing to be used to establish accountability. The problem, to me, is plain. When A Nation At Risk came out in the 1980s, the US education system entered triage mode. We've never left it. We've pandered to corporate interests, as they sell us 'proven' tests (the creators of those tests have gone on record as saying that it's useless to test the sort of thing that politicians want tested) and curriculum delivery systems that simply do not work. As anyone will tell you, the entire hospital cannot be run like the ER, and yet we do just that. There is a solution, but it is all but unthinkable in the current climate. I've discussed this with other teachers, and they've rebelled against the notion, even though they later admit that perhaps it's the only way.

One last comment. I am currently working at one of the selective enrollment schools featured in the Freakonomics study. Students merely have to apply, and there's a lottery. There are, as a result, a wide variance of student ability levels, but not 100% bell curved--the very top can score well enough to get into Northside College Prep or Walter Payton College Prep. I arrived at the end of March, when the Prairie State push was in overdrive. Metrics were everywhere, and the pie-in-the-sky target of 18 was pretty much unattainable, if the various practice tests were to be believed. When the school's score came back 19, though, there was the usual jubilant celebration, but undermining this was 'the fear'. One administrator said when asked by a teacher what was done differently this year, he replied, "I don't know." They'd tried a lot of things, and clearly one was the winner, but which? Why is this navel gazing important? Why do I call it "the fear"? Because schools all over the area will be sent to this school, to learn from them. They're a success, after all. They did much better than predicted. Will these schools settle for, "We don't know?" I doubt it.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'bmg, venus hum, donna summer' to 'bmg, venus hum, donna summer, flashing dress, librarian glasses' - edited by calvados

so why are the librarians at war??? Dewey Decimal system???

Brunet and hot librarian glasses? Where do I sign up!

>> ^Bruti79:
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
>> ^Stormsinger:
Yeah, cause there's no dates or locations associated with those particular videos, right?
Actually, you could be correct...Fox may not employ anyone with enough brainpower to figure out how to appropriately label their videos.

Oye, talk about inexperience. You haven't had to sort through reals of stock footage, splice it all together 1000 times a day. Stuff like this happens all the time in network news, just usually isn't that big of a deal. Not that it isn't worth laughing about, it isn't something to get all high and mighty about or say something as ridiculous as your saying.

Actually I have, when I was the video librarian for CBC Sports. If you can't see the huge embeded time stamp or know how to bring it up, you shouldn't be working on those machines.


That is your system. Not all tags are worked in the same way. Most all the tags for this would of been the same, spare the date. (washinton, rally, even health care was on the the docet for the 9-12 march). Granted, it COULD of been internal, but the similarity of the grouping tags is reason enough for me to accept that it was a simple mistake, someone doing the motions to fast and not checking something as simple as the date. 2008 and 2006 look very similar when you are looking fast

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
>> ^Stormsinger:
Yeah, cause there's no dates or locations associated with those particular videos, right?
Actually, you could be correct...Fox may not employ anyone with enough brainpower to figure out how to appropriately label their videos.

Oye, talk about inexperience. You haven't had to sort through reals of stock footage, splice it all together 1000 times a day. Stuff like this happens all the time in network news, just usually isn't that big of a deal. Not that it isn't worth laughing about, it isn't something to get all high and mighty about or say something as ridiculous as your saying.


Actually I have, when I was the video librarian for CBC Sports. If you can't see the huge embeded time stamp or know how to bring it up, you shouldn't be working on those machines.

>> ^choggie:
Hmmm. Lessse dystopiaufrtdy, Pat Condell needs a spot on the BBC's nightly wank. Deek Jackson has his own news channel on YouTube called FKKN News-My vote is for Deek to replace all media news outlets' collective hoo-ha, and for everyone to get Telescreens™ that can't be turned off, only down.
24/7 deprogramming is the only way to undo what has been done to nations of the television addicted-That and bring back hard copys' popularity....The public library needs a revamp-Fettish librarians, BYOBBB, and hooka lounges....and a ventilation chamber for homeless folks.


I sense this is about as close as I get before the choggie parabola swings wide again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1Lfl2j7ahE - Very funny, and similarly riding that fine line between the serious and self-parody.

Hmmm. Lessse dystopiaufrtdy, Pat Condell needs a spot on the BBC's nightly wank. Deek Jackson has his own news channel on YouTube called FKKN News-My vote is for Deek to replace all media news outlets' collective hoo-ha, and for everyone to get Telescreens™ that can't be turned off, only down.

24/7 deprogramming is the only way to undo what has been done to nations of the television addicted-That and bring back hard copys' popularity....The public library needs a revamp-Fettish librarians, BYOBBB, and hooka lounges....and a ventilation chamber for homeless folks.

Excellent job. That and the woman behind Sen Franken is really hot, in a librarian sort of way.

My line of work is kind of similar to a librarian's... I have to try this out.

My view has always been - buy the hardcover if you plan to keep it in your personal library. The soft covers are always the first ones to go when you start to thin them. Also, make sure you don't plan on moving any time soon.

I moved to a new town one year ago. I had too many books and almost all hardcovers. I "had" to sell over 250 books before we moved (garage sale) - most of them were hardcovers. That hurt, but don't worry, I still have over 4 book cases full. A Librarian came and bought most of them so that made me feel better. I kept the classics and the non-fiction.

My most expensive book is a $300 HC Star Wars book my wife bought me a few years back plus a few $150 H.R. Giger books and several ($??) Art books. I also have an original hard cover book on the diaries of Emily Carr, signed by her from around 1920.

Edit: I have on several occasions bought a soft cover, liked it and then turned around and went back and exchanged it for the hard cover so I could keep it around. (Yes they let you return and exchange books - just keep them in good shape.)

Dude eats sandwich in under TWO minutes.

>> ^MINK:
dude jumps out of shallow pool. wow.
what next? girl opens jar of jam after man loosens it for her? librarian finds book in under 10 minutes? caterpillar eats leaves?
coming soon on "amazing"sift.