I've been cited...

Occassionally, I Google myself. I have a unique name (I'd even venture to say I'm the only person with my name), so it's easy to do. That in and of itself is good and bad, but that's another post. At any rate, if there are web hits, it's most likely me. What I discovered this go around, was that an article I wrote in 2005 was cited in a library school student's paper. That's kind of cool. And, odd. My article was listed in the List of References, but I couldn't find where I was cited anywhere in the paper. Now, when I wrote papers, I did not list sources in my bibliography unless I used information from them and if I did I cited them in text as well.

The other down side. The column editor was given co-author status in the citation. I find this a little unnerving. She asked me to write the article and turned it in. She contributed nothing to the actual article, yet anyone looking at the citation will assume she contributed at least half of the article. Sigh.

All in all though, it's pretty cool to have an article cited by someone else. It just goes to show that regardless of what you think when you submit an article (I thought no one outside the state of Arkansas would read it), once it's indexed in a database, others will read it.

And, in an interesting side note, I found what appeared to be a reference to another article I wrote on Monster.com of all things. However, when I went to see how it was cited, the link is no longer good. That just gets my curiosity going. And, again shows that you never know how a published article will be referenced or by whom.

HTML vs an editor

American Libraries Direct (February 28 issue) linked to a posting on TechEssence.info blog titled "CMSes, WYSIWYG -- why learn HTML?" The question is with editors like FrontPage and DreamWeaver why do you need to know HTML? I didn't learn to do HTML until I took a graduate class on web design as part of the program for my MLS. My instructor was of the opinion that you learn to code it, then you can use an editor. His reasoning was more than sound - if you can code it, then you can look at someone else's (or something else's) code to identify where problems are coming from. He also contended that if you code it yourself, it keeps the coding cleaner, making it easier for others to know what you have done. So, I learned HTML, some Java script, and some ASP.

Shortly after starting my first professional librarian position, I wound up re-designing my library's website. I tried using the university's template, but without their style sheet it wasn't feasible. So, I took our new design and I coded it out. In HTML. Using a simple text editor (a step up from Notepad). It won't win awards, but it was a definite improvement over the six year-old design of the existing website. I used cascading style sheets and a tad of ASP.

After I'd been doing it awhile, I was given MS Frontpage. Then I knew what my instructor was talking about. I simply used this as an enhanced editor. And, it did forms nicely. But, if you tried to use the visual interface, the coding was worse than messy. And, it can take what you've done and basically throw it out the window. I also looked at the process for cascading style sheets in FrontPage. I decided I was better off doing it myself. I learned quickly why I was taught to code it and why coding it is still probably the best way to go.

Here's a link to the blog posting: http://techessence.info/node/84