December Days 2022 #29: Literate
Dec. 29th, 2022 11:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradept[What's December Days this year? Taking a crowdsourced list of adjectives and seeing if I can turn them into saying good things about myself. Or at least good things to talk about.]
As a scholar of an earlier time period, and someone who has to work in our current era, a world mediated by technology requires literacy. This should not be a surprising statement, although it seems to be only a recent expansion of the definition to include literacies that are not directly related to the art of translating between glyphs and oral language. It's certainly not in the definitions provided by my dictionary source for this entry.
I work at an intersection of literacies. While not part of formal education processes, except in those tangents of supplying information that will be rendered with quotations and citations, I am nonetheless deeply involved with the acquisition and application of literacies. The artifacts in my collections and access terminals to other collections are offered freely for these purposes. Many of the programs on offer at the library are meant for the same things. I do not formally teach reading and writing, instead, my job is to provide materials to help with learning reading and writing or entice people into exercising those skills to achieve their desired ends, whether they are apparent frivolities or matters of grave import. Most people agree that a public library, and especially a youth services department, is in the business of getting kids to practice their print literacy so we'll that they will be unafraid of using it for the entirety of their lives. As they age, that print literacy is put to the task of finding information as well as finding enjoyable fiction, but there starts to be both competing media types and the greater application of stereotype to who is encouraged to enjoy and really develop their print literacy and who is expected to maintain that literacy adequately to function in society but otherwise disdain print entertainment as unmanly compared to visual, auditory, or performance arts.
Or they're steered into technology of one sort or another, and here we find a second literacy that's increasingly just assumed to have happened, rather than something that needs to be taught and practiced. For as much as designers and programmers wish to believe that they have succeeded at creating something "intuitive," it turns out that enough generations have passed that iconography like floppy disk, or publishing practices like the desktop, file folders, and knowledge management practices like classification systems, metadata labeling, and search operators are all relics of a bygone era. The dominant paradigm of "pictures under glass" didn't change, but going from mouse and keyboard to touch interfaces simplified some of those aspects and complicated others. Furthermore, as the shift from general-purpose computers to appliances with walled gardens full of single-purpose apps available from a limited number of app stores continues, it is increasingly more difficult to teach and reinforce software and hardware literacy, such that information obtained in working with one platform, service, or paradigm can be applied to an unfamiliar platform, service, or paradigm. Which often means I end up coming back and helping people time after time to do what are functionally the same things on different services or different devices, because the pictures or the labels are different and rather than having learned the underlying principles, most people are looking to replicate a process and need the superficial elements to all align before they can do the thing. App view versus mobile view versus desktop view (and how sometimes certain functions are only available in one or the other) can complicate things for people as well. The smallings aren't necessarily learning it, even though they're getting plenty of access to devices, because their devices are usually locked to school (or library) policy and the grownups aren't learning it because devices are touted as not needing instruction once they've been set up by the family sysadmin for the limited purposes the device (or the sysadmin) will allow.
With glyph literacy and technological literacy, I can do most of my work already (and already seem like someone who can work miracles,) but I need a third literacy to get to most of my job description's required functions, because people ask me for advice like I have a fine-grained expertise about my collections based on the copious time they believe I have to read and view my collections extensively. The most common type of media literacy I need is to traverse a graph of tropes and shorthand, the relationships between tropes and shorthand, and the creators and works associated with various tropes and shorthand. Finding a linkage between where the asker is on the graph and at least one of the works in my collections, often dynamically, and then refining the desired endpoints based on feedback, is the reader's advisory process. Computers can help with this somewhat, in that they can build and traverse much larger graphs than humans can. Their utility, though, is directly proportional to the quality of the information put into them, and similarly proportional to how much the human's query matches the way the computer understands everything. Sometimes people like or dislike things for different reasons than everyone else, which tends to flummox the machines and their algorithms. My own system isn't based as much on extensive knowledge and pattern-matching as it is letting the shelves jog my memory about things and reading some of the marketing copy for things that look like they have good cover art or a nice blurb. Or, if I'm using online resources to try and do the matches, I usually try to figure out what that system believes, and then supplement it with other recommendations made around in the Internet and why, so that I can get a better picture of what would be liked and what wouldn't. If I've got the time, I might consult with someone who does read the genres for their enjoyment to see if there are hidden gems that I might be missing out on with the more surface treatments that I'm going to give by not being a genre expert. Or, for that matter, reading a whole lot of the materials that I'm recommending.
Those are the basic literacies that I have to work with, and I have to acquire more of them, or at least figure out how to get up to speed on so many other things as they become important or someone asks me about them. There are a few subjects where policy says I'm not able to do anything about them because it requires more licensure than I have or it's the kind of situation where the consequences of getting it wrong are pretty stiff, but for the most part, I have to produce instant or quick expertise on a subject using my skills and the collected resources available. Which is probably slightly miraculous every time it happens, given how much more information there is in the world and how much more gets added to it on a daily basis.
The adjective might also mean something about doing a lot of reading, which for me tends to be in article and graphic novel forms, so they go quickly, rather than monographs. I feel like I still do okay for reading interesting things, but it would be better, I think, if I had one of those time dilation devices that allows me to get more caught up on everything without having my buddy or kind age even faster through the use of the things. Because my brain wants to do everything at once and it's frustrated by the limitations of only being able to do things in real time. If I didn't have the job, I might be able to do more reading and playing and listening and writing and all of that, and be even more literate and feel even more behind on everything.
- literate (comparative more literate, superlative most literate)
- Able to read and write; having literacy. quotations
- Knowledgeable in literature, writing; literary; well-read.
- Which is used in writing (of a language or dialect).
As a scholar of an earlier time period, and someone who has to work in our current era, a world mediated by technology requires literacy. This should not be a surprising statement, although it seems to be only a recent expansion of the definition to include literacies that are not directly related to the art of translating between glyphs and oral language. It's certainly not in the definitions provided by my dictionary source for this entry.
I work at an intersection of literacies. While not part of formal education processes, except in those tangents of supplying information that will be rendered with quotations and citations, I am nonetheless deeply involved with the acquisition and application of literacies. The artifacts in my collections and access terminals to other collections are offered freely for these purposes. Many of the programs on offer at the library are meant for the same things. I do not formally teach reading and writing, instead, my job is to provide materials to help with learning reading and writing or entice people into exercising those skills to achieve their desired ends, whether they are apparent frivolities or matters of grave import. Most people agree that a public library, and especially a youth services department, is in the business of getting kids to practice their print literacy so we'll that they will be unafraid of using it for the entirety of their lives. As they age, that print literacy is put to the task of finding information as well as finding enjoyable fiction, but there starts to be both competing media types and the greater application of stereotype to who is encouraged to enjoy and really develop their print literacy and who is expected to maintain that literacy adequately to function in society but otherwise disdain print entertainment as unmanly compared to visual, auditory, or performance arts.
Or they're steered into technology of one sort or another, and here we find a second literacy that's increasingly just assumed to have happened, rather than something that needs to be taught and practiced. For as much as designers and programmers wish to believe that they have succeeded at creating something "intuitive," it turns out that enough generations have passed that iconography like floppy disk, or publishing practices like the desktop, file folders, and knowledge management practices like classification systems, metadata labeling, and search operators are all relics of a bygone era. The dominant paradigm of "pictures under glass" didn't change, but going from mouse and keyboard to touch interfaces simplified some of those aspects and complicated others. Furthermore, as the shift from general-purpose computers to appliances with walled gardens full of single-purpose apps available from a limited number of app stores continues, it is increasingly more difficult to teach and reinforce software and hardware literacy, such that information obtained in working with one platform, service, or paradigm can be applied to an unfamiliar platform, service, or paradigm. Which often means I end up coming back and helping people time after time to do what are functionally the same things on different services or different devices, because the pictures or the labels are different and rather than having learned the underlying principles, most people are looking to replicate a process and need the superficial elements to all align before they can do the thing. App view versus mobile view versus desktop view (and how sometimes certain functions are only available in one or the other) can complicate things for people as well. The smallings aren't necessarily learning it, even though they're getting plenty of access to devices, because their devices are usually locked to school (or library) policy and the grownups aren't learning it because devices are touted as not needing instruction once they've been set up by the family sysadmin for the limited purposes the device (or the sysadmin) will allow.
With glyph literacy and technological literacy, I can do most of my work already (and already seem like someone who can work miracles,) but I need a third literacy to get to most of my job description's required functions, because people ask me for advice like I have a fine-grained expertise about my collections based on the copious time they believe I have to read and view my collections extensively. The most common type of media literacy I need is to traverse a graph of tropes and shorthand, the relationships between tropes and shorthand, and the creators and works associated with various tropes and shorthand. Finding a linkage between where the asker is on the graph and at least one of the works in my collections, often dynamically, and then refining the desired endpoints based on feedback, is the reader's advisory process. Computers can help with this somewhat, in that they can build and traverse much larger graphs than humans can. Their utility, though, is directly proportional to the quality of the information put into them, and similarly proportional to how much the human's query matches the way the computer understands everything. Sometimes people like or dislike things for different reasons than everyone else, which tends to flummox the machines and their algorithms. My own system isn't based as much on extensive knowledge and pattern-matching as it is letting the shelves jog my memory about things and reading some of the marketing copy for things that look like they have good cover art or a nice blurb. Or, if I'm using online resources to try and do the matches, I usually try to figure out what that system believes, and then supplement it with other recommendations made around in the Internet and why, so that I can get a better picture of what would be liked and what wouldn't. If I've got the time, I might consult with someone who does read the genres for their enjoyment to see if there are hidden gems that I might be missing out on with the more surface treatments that I'm going to give by not being a genre expert. Or, for that matter, reading a whole lot of the materials that I'm recommending.
Those are the basic literacies that I have to work with, and I have to acquire more of them, or at least figure out how to get up to speed on so many other things as they become important or someone asks me about them. There are a few subjects where policy says I'm not able to do anything about them because it requires more licensure than I have or it's the kind of situation where the consequences of getting it wrong are pretty stiff, but for the most part, I have to produce instant or quick expertise on a subject using my skills and the collected resources available. Which is probably slightly miraculous every time it happens, given how much more information there is in the world and how much more gets added to it on a daily basis.
The adjective might also mean something about doing a lot of reading, which for me tends to be in article and graphic novel forms, so they go quickly, rather than monographs. I feel like I still do okay for reading interesting things, but it would be better, I think, if I had one of those time dilation devices that allows me to get more caught up on everything without having my buddy or kind age even faster through the use of the things. Because my brain wants to do everything at once and it's frustrated by the limitations of only being able to do things in real time. If I didn't have the job, I might be able to do more reading and playing and listening and writing and all of that, and be even more literate and feel even more behind on everything.
no subject
Date: 2022-12-30 12:21 pm (UTC)Did you ever get hold of Pascal Rogé's recitals for Decca?
In particular the Gnossiènnes, the underperformed and underrated sisters of the Gymnopédies?
no subject
Date: 2022-12-31 05:59 am (UTC)