This has been a good past week. I have had solid momentum going and was able to produce a number of new entries. The problem? I only have a few days left in my internship and I'm getting into a good groove now. I guess that it is not too surprising since all workplaces, digital and otherwise, take some getting used to. What has helped a lot is my Zotero indexed collection. Now that it is pretty well filled in I can use the tags, or a general search, and come up with documents I'm familiar with for references. And I have pretyped wiki-formatted reference data ready to be simply copied and pasted where necessary. If you haven't used Zotero yet, I recommend it, especially if you write anything that needs to be referenced or need to juggle between a lot of sources.
The amount of sources I have been able to find relating to the Mongolian Knowledge Society has been surprising. When I was working on my report for Mongolia last semester at one point I got a little frustrated on how little information I was able to find. Eventually did find a number of good sources, but with this internship I have probably quadrupled that number. This is not to say that they are all great sources, or that some of the NGO project descriptions I've found are dabbling heavily in hyperbole. But I have been able to find many authoritative resources secreted here and there around the web. In fact, often in the past few weeks my problem has been an overabundance of sources leading to twenty or more open browser tabs at a time (not so efficient). It remains true though, that even if this information is out there, it is still hard to come by in a accessible and coherent fashion. Hopefully I have made it a little easier with my wiki entries. A few of them even come up near the top in a Google search!
Newest entries:
Bank of Mongolia
Mobile phones
Mongolian government
-Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (MOECS)
-Mongolian heads of state under communism
-President of Mongolia
Mongolian Telecommunication Company (MTC)
NewCom Group
-Mobicom
Non-formal distance education
Skytel
User:Gossett (I finally got around to filling out my profile)
Wireless Local Loop (WLL)
The government entries are not all related to the Knowledge Society per se, but they snuck in there because I started looking into the ministries involved in education and ended up wanting to give those groups context with some other information on the government. It all still needs a lot of filling out, especially since I get diverted to telecom companies because I wanted to give some background for the mobile phones entry (which led to Wireless Local Loop as well). I even somehow got distracted into editing a Wikipedia entry for one of the Korean joint stakeholders in Skytel (I was bothered by blatantly promotional language). Alas, it's all in the nature of web 2.0 isn't it.
Though my internship is coming to a close I intend to continue to contribute to Monreference for a few reasons. First, I still have more entries on the Knowledge Society waiting to be written (the media being a glaring example of this). Second, I'm invested in the project now. It would be hard to just abandon it at this point. Third, I would like to learn more about Mongolia and this just gives me another reason to continue to do so. And fourth, wikis need active, flesh and bones humans working with them in order to live. I'd like to see this one live. I'll be doing less with it since school will be taking more of my time, but I'll do what I can.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Back from a retreat.
Well, I just finished with a "Reference retreat" here at UW-Madison. It sounds fancier than it is, there is no secluded resort full of white-gloved servants; it's more like a day of presentations and meeting people, which is fine. Unfortunately, much of the stuff didn't have a lot of bearing on what I will be doing any time soon, but it is always good to bear witness to a passionate debate about the future of reference services. It may not be the most exciting thing to a lot of people, but others find the whole thing fascinating. Since there is a lot of discussion about the future of reference services and how technology will play out with it, I thought that there might be some brains I could tap into about wiki development. Alas, though web 2.0 may be a catchword that excites many librarians, most of them are largely mystified by it. My "lunch group" had as their topic wiki technologies, but the participants mostly were using them as consolidated human resource tools and technical quick references for documents previously stored on paper. When I asked if anyone was thinking about turning their HTML subject guides for their libraries into collaborative wikis all I got was blank stares. Oh well. It just goes to reinforce how new this technology is to many. One thing that got repeated over and over though, is that the real challenge behind a wiki is to get people to use it, then contribute to it.
My biggest new contribution is an entry for Education, though a few areas under education could still use some filling out, especially with the non-formal distance education I mentioned earlier. That one will get its own entry though. A complementary entry is Institutions of Higher Education Listing. I also started an entry for the Asian Development Bank, since they are behind many education and development initiatives in Mongolia, and have emailed the representative in Mongolia to see if they are interested in contributing more information.
My biggest new contribution is an entry for Education, though a few areas under education could still use some filling out, especially with the non-formal distance education I mentioned earlier. That one will get its own entry though. A complementary entry is Institutions of Higher Education Listing. I also started an entry for the Asian Development Bank, since they are behind many education and development initiatives in Mongolia, and have emailed the representative in Mongolia to see if they are interested in contributing more information.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Mongolian Riots
The recent elections in Ulaanbataar have brought rioting with five dead, a number of injured, and the ruling party's building has been burned down. It appears that some cultural institutions have been damaged as well, it will be good to see the extent of the damage when everything settles.
For a lowdown on what's going on check out Brian White's This Month in Mongolian Studies blog.
To better understand the role of mining on Mongolia's economy, check out this NYTimes clip.
Some other sources:
Open Society Story: Day two of the emergency state (2008-07-03).
Al Jazeera's coverage on Youtube.
Al Jazeera's article that explains how mining issues, poverty, corruption, and environmental concerns have played into unrest in Mongolia.
AP footage.
BBC coverage.
NY Times story.
For a lowdown on what's going on check out Brian White's This Month in Mongolian Studies blog.
To better understand the role of mining on Mongolia's economy, check out this NYTimes clip.
Some other sources:
Open Society Story: Day two of the emergency state (2008-07-03).
Al Jazeera's coverage on Youtube.
Al Jazeera's article that explains how mining issues, poverty, corruption, and environmental concerns have played into unrest in Mongolia.
AP footage.
BBC coverage.
NY Times story.
Poets + Libraries = Something good
My newest entries:
Libraries
Lib4u
Renchinii Choinom
Danzan Ravjaa
and Information Content
This last week was good in the sense that I worked with two topics that I particularly care about: poetry and libraries. The two poets listed above, Renchinii Choinom and Danzan Ravjaa, just sort of came out of the blue for me while I was looking for information on other things. I figured I shouldn't pass up the opportunity to help the world know more about these two, especially since it appears that it is next to impossible to find much of their work in translation.
Danzan Ravjaa is quite an interesting figure to learn about since he led such a crazy life. He went from being a poor singing boy begging with his father to a literary monk who established, quite possibly, the first public school in Mongolia-- in addition to monasteries and a public theater. He was considered extremely principled and is still appreciated today for his poetry. He also wrote an operetta that apparently takes almost a month to perform and is ten volumes long. And surprisingly, to me anyhow, he belonged to a branch of Buddhism that allowed monks to drink and have sex (he was apparently fond of both). He had a suspicious death, probably by poisoning. After his death his collection of manuscripts and relics (his own writing among them) continued his life's odd journey. When the communists took over and started gutting monasteries a family of "Curators," with a lineage that going back to a friend of Danzan Ravjaa's, buried the items in numerous crates in the mountains. Only in the early nineties were some of them excavated and put on display. The British Library's Endangered Archives Programme sponsored the creation of a digital image collection of unique documents from this cache.
I also got a hold of Krystyna Matusiak, a digital librarian at UW-Milwaukee. She took part in a newspaper digitization project in Mongolia also funded by the Endangered Archives Programme and has given me some more information on the elusive Mongolian Press Institute, which will be helpful. Look for an article on her experience in Ulaanbataar in a fall issue of Serials Librarian.
Working on the "Libraries" entry has been good as well, since I keep coming up with new information. I think that it is probably the longest article so far, and it might be a good idea to split it up into separate headings for the different kinds of libraries. I'm still curious about libraries outside of Ulaanbataar, though, if they do exist, clearly they are not substantial.
I came across two web 2.0 resources that may be useful down the road. A Library and Information Science Wiki and the Facebook Library 2.0 Interest Group.
Currently reading: Travels of an Alchemist by Chang Chun, recorded by Li Chi-chang, translated by Arthur Waley. It is an account of a famous Daoist master, Chang Chun's, overland trek from Shandong Province to the Hindu Kush to meet with Chinggis Khan.
Continuing with the human side of the knowledge society I plan to put in entries relating to education this week. Some already exist from another contributor, though they focus largely on education for those with disabilities. I look forward to finding out more about the government's Non-formal Distance Education program, especially considering the unique challenges it faces in Mongolia.
Libraries
Lib4u
Renchinii Choinom
Danzan Ravjaa
and Information Content
This last week was good in the sense that I worked with two topics that I particularly care about: poetry and libraries. The two poets listed above, Renchinii Choinom and Danzan Ravjaa, just sort of came out of the blue for me while I was looking for information on other things. I figured I shouldn't pass up the opportunity to help the world know more about these two, especially since it appears that it is next to impossible to find much of their work in translation.
Danzan Ravjaa is quite an interesting figure to learn about since he led such a crazy life. He went from being a poor singing boy begging with his father to a literary monk who established, quite possibly, the first public school in Mongolia-- in addition to monasteries and a public theater. He was considered extremely principled and is still appreciated today for his poetry. He also wrote an operetta that apparently takes almost a month to perform and is ten volumes long. And surprisingly, to me anyhow, he belonged to a branch of Buddhism that allowed monks to drink and have sex (he was apparently fond of both). He had a suspicious death, probably by poisoning. After his death his collection of manuscripts and relics (his own writing among them) continued his life's odd journey. When the communists took over and started gutting monasteries a family of "Curators," with a lineage that going back to a friend of Danzan Ravjaa's, buried the items in numerous crates in the mountains. Only in the early nineties were some of them excavated and put on display. The British Library's Endangered Archives Programme sponsored the creation of a digital image collection of unique documents from this cache.
I also got a hold of Krystyna Matusiak, a digital librarian at UW-Milwaukee. She took part in a newspaper digitization project in Mongolia also funded by the Endangered Archives Programme and has given me some more information on the elusive Mongolian Press Institute, which will be helpful. Look for an article on her experience in Ulaanbataar in a fall issue of Serials Librarian.
Working on the "Libraries" entry has been good as well, since I keep coming up with new information. I think that it is probably the longest article so far, and it might be a good idea to split it up into separate headings for the different kinds of libraries. I'm still curious about libraries outside of Ulaanbataar, though, if they do exist, clearly they are not substantial.
I came across two web 2.0 resources that may be useful down the road. A Library and Information Science Wiki and the Facebook Library 2.0 Interest Group.
Currently reading: Travels of an Alchemist by Chang Chun, recorded by Li Chi-chang, translated by Arthur Waley. It is an account of a famous Daoist master, Chang Chun's, overland trek from Shandong Province to the Hindu Kush to meet with Chinggis Khan.
Continuing with the human side of the knowledge society I plan to put in entries relating to education this week. Some already exist from another contributor, though they focus largely on education for those with disabilities. I look forward to finding out more about the government's Non-formal Distance Education program, especially considering the unique challenges it faces in Mongolia.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
