Lifelong Learning, Libraries and 'Omics, Work and more...

[tcpip]

Again much of the spare time (ha!) that I have been spent on readings and writings for Facilitating Lifelong Learning. As is my want, I've started to add this material to a Drupal book on my website. Feedback on my teaching philosophy statement was impressively comprehensive and positive, a credit to the unit co-ordinator. I have also taken some issue with Arnett's theory of "emerging adulthood"; would be delighted to find another scholar interested in putting together a stronger and longer critique of the idea (yes, shehasathree, I am looking in your direction). On a distantly related topic, was provided an interesting scan of an article from New Humanist criticising much of the "self-help" industry, which has generated some discussion.

LUV has acquired a Motorolla LS2208 Barcode Scanner which just does the job. Have experimented with various library software today to find what is most suitable; Koha is awesome, heavyweight, and requires a bit of knowledge on how to install stubborn perl packages. Library Thing is quite popular for a webservice and includes most of the functionality that we'd need. GCstar provides a local install, excellent import and export, simple to install, and provides good templates. I think this one might be the path to take. In other LUV news, our meeting on Tuesday had an excellent presentation from co-worker, Dr. Dave Perkins, on the contribution of Linux to 'Omics (i.e., Proteonomics, Genomics, Variomics).

A fair chunk of worktime this week was taken up in the preparation and conducting of our internal audit; from all accounts it went well. Responses will be incorporated in time for our external audit at the end of the month for ISO 9001:2008 certification. Not much on the gaming front this week; the Pendragon session witnessed the appearance of a young Lancelot, who managed to annoy by his ability and personality. Second half of the session involved the beginning a rather interesting tangent of the Arthurian legend - his invasion of the Roman Empire (c.f., Malory V, 5-6; Geoffrey x,3-4). This evening's activities will be a housewarming with wildilocks and _fustian).

Comments

[fred_mouse]

Library thing fails poorly if items you have are rare, and you want to go the non-manual route to adding items. Otherwise, I have little in the way of complaints about it.

[tcpip]

I was very happy the simple export function, and tested small "bulk" text files of ISBN numbers. Seemed to work quite well.

[shehasathree]

Talk to me more about critiquing Arnett's 'emerging adulthood' concept!

[tcpip]

I'd like to have a shot at their qualitative epistemology. Both cognitive (Piaget) and moral (Kohlberg) projects in developmental psychology note qualitative differences in the transition from late childhood to adolescence. They don't need to have a "emerging adulthood" because there's nothing new in cognitive or moral reasoning gained.

It seems to me that Arnett combines relativistic social categories (e.g., Erikson) with neurological stability to argue that there is a new category in developmental psychology. I don't think that is justifiable.

[castleclear.livejournal.com]

Reading your LJ is always a treat! Best regards,hopes and wishes for all of it. :D

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Thank you dear friend. I shall endeavour to continue the interesting narrative!

[carlowe.livejournal.com]

What are you using the barcode scanner for at LUV? Literally, library borrowings?

I acquired a second hand one for work in the hope of smoothing the parts inwards transition, mostly past the manager who Has To Do Everything Himself Or Its Not Done Properly and is currently weeks behind to the point where we may lose the repair contracts....grief. Anyway...can you advise me on how I could set it up to be useful? as a minimum I would like to be able to capture the part number to copy and paste, but that depends on something interpreting the barcode, right? If I am lucky the antiquated database software from the parent company has barcode facility, which might solve this problem.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

What are you using the barcode scanner for at LUV? Literally, library borrowings?

Yes, that's right. The general idea is to have the librarian (Wen) take only the books requested to the meetings - and collect them - rather than have to cart the entire box around.

... but that depends on something interpreting the barcode, right?

That's correct. The barcode scanner acts like a keyboard, and displays the ISBN number. GCstar then does a fetch from various sites (including, for example, Amazon) to work out what the product is.