Google Metadata and Librarians

I went to an amazing library conference last November - the Charleston Conference.  During the last plenary session, we got to hear Jon Orwant, a Google engineering manager, talk about the Google Books project.

Now, you've probably seen old-fashioned librarians like me reel and hiss at the very idea, nay, the very notion, of Google presuming to scan books and make them wholly or partially available online.  Yes, there are plenty of lawsuits out there.  Yes, of course, having Google send a very charismatic speaker to a premier conference is self serving and in their best interests.  And yes, there are issues about intellectual property rights and access and digitization, and the fact that so many cataloging mistakes have happened, and all that other stuff.

But this guy was COOL.

I won't go into the more technical aspects of his talk.  But I do want to tell you about one thing he shared with us.  One of the reasons for this project is to facilitate research, and Google gives academic scholarships and access to their databases for various projects.  Back in the 1950s, a definitive book about the Victorian era was published.  To write it, the author basically read every book he could get his hands on that was written during that time, and mined them for data about language, and custom, and culture, and so forth. 

Google gave a grant to a group of scholars who wanted to recreate this guy's work, but digitally.  Since so many books from that era have now been digitized, keyword searches can be used now instead of tedious page-by-page reviewing.  So this group of folks (I think they were from George Mason University, though I may be wrong on that) gained access to the Google databases and used a set of 50 keywords - words like "leisure" and "work"- then tracked their usage over time to see how common they were.  And in fact, the word "leisure" started to disappear over the era, and the word "work" increased exponentially.  Ok, so that's cool already, right? 

Well, this Google engineer went one better to show us how digitization could expedite research.  He created a graph of every book published by date and subject, that could then be zoomed in on specific periods.  So at the dawn of the printing press - BOOM - a spike in books.  Zoom in on French literature from 1650 to 1750 - BOOM - you see a spike because of the French Enlightenment.  (It was really funny - he zoomed in on that quite by accident, and said "Huh - I wonder why there's a spike here?" And the room of 1000 librarians all started shouting "It's the French Enlightenment!"  Heh.)

COOLEST THING EVER.

I wish he'd put that chart online so folks could play with it - heck, for those of us at his talk we'd probably be willing to pay!

Reading and Writing (but no 'rithmetic)

I want to do a social research project.  Anyone who's been a librarian, or a teacher, or even a parent has heard the notion that "people who read a lot are better writers than those who eschew reading".  That just sounds completely true, right?  It's a no-brainer!  But there have been very few empirical studies done to prove that fact.  And really, it would be nearly impossible to do - you'd have to get permission from the students you surveyed not only for the survey about their reading habits, but you'd need to get other data about them - from their professors - on how well they write.  That's the only way you can get reliable data.  But research projects these days are very, very sensitive to the participants' identities, so I just don't know how you could do it so that the results are actually meaningful.  You absolutely HAVE to be able to compare the two, and that can only be done if someone working with the study knows the identity of the participants.

Technically, it would be very simple - ask a series of questions like "How often do you read material that is not course-related?" and "What kinds of materials do you like to read {books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, etc)?" and "Now that you are in college, do you find you read more for pleasure or less?"  Then you take those students' answers, and compare them to their writing ability (preferably judged by someone who has experience grading and evaluating writing).  Then see if there's a correlation between those who read more for pleasure and those who are better writers.

Still, I can't figure out how to get around the privacy issues.  Maybe if I partnered with English or Composition faculty who worked that in somehow as part of a course?  What if you took blind surveys of students taking one of the many "fun" classes universities offer now (like mini-semester courses on Tolkien, or other popular authors) and compared that with a blind survey of the same level of student in a regular comp class.  You could make the assumption that the students interested in Tolkien are probably "readers", but I still don't think that would give you reliable data in the long run.

If you have any good ideas, let me know.  In the meanwhile, off and on as I have time, I'm going to continue to look for work others have already done on the subject. I've seen several on reading and general academic level, but I want a more granular study targeting writing ability!

Was Frodo a Calvinist?

Another post from my other blog, this one from way back in 2007.  Still, I think I have a point (and still, I think just about anyone with a philosophical or theological background could pick my argument apart) but here it is, for what it's worth. 

____________________________________

Have I admitted recently that I am a Tolkien nerd? If not, I humbly admit it now. {{grin}}

I recently re-watched The Lord of the Rings (LotR), and was having a conversation with someone that made me stop and think. First of all, I don't despise the movies as some die-hard fans do. I think Peter Jackson did all right most of the time. The Faramir thing, tho, and the Sam/Gollum/Frodo thing on the stairs in Mordor, are almost unforgivable. I do confess to fast forwarding through the latter during my last viewing. (And I probably will again, next time I watch!)

But here's my biggest beef, I think. I'm just not crazy about the way Elijah Wood plays Frodo. Or at the very least, how he was directed to play Frodo (not sure if that was an actor or a director failing). In the books you get the sense that, yes, Frodo was "pulled" into this adventure through no design of his own. But once he gets on the Road, he is determined to see it through to whatever bitter end may come. You read about his fighting against the power of the ring, resisting it at every moment. For me, that internal struggle is very important. He knows what he has to do. He's fighting every step to do it, despite incredible pressure to surrender the ring to Sauron.

In the movies, Frodo seems much weaker. Sam saves him from surrendering the ring to the Nazgul in Osgiliath. Aragorn saves him on Weathertop. The few times you see him "fight" with the ring's power, he simply looks like he's about to barf (You know that look on his face - it's more reminiscent of indigestion than determination!). You just don't get that same sense of deep and abiding struggle that you read page after page in the books. Now, I do know that there are some scenes where you do see him fight... at least twice (off the top of my head) I can thing of Frodo and Gollum locked in battle. But in these cases, Frodo isn't fighting against the ring, Frodo is fighting to KEEP the ring. But I'm digressing....

Anyway, as we were talking about this after the movie ended, my conversation buddie said... "In the movies, Frodo is a Calvinist. In the books, he's a Thomist." First I must say that I am neither a theologian nor a philosopher, so what follows here can probably be picked apart by just about anyone. But I thought I'd throw it out for further consideration anyway! Why is he a Calvinist in the movie? Because everything that happens is external to him. Sam saves him from the Nazgul. He's mainly just going with the flow - you don't see him initiating or changing events, but reacting. Yes, I do know he's changing events by destroying the ring in the end, and changing events by saying he'll take the ring in the first place!) But on the whole, you don't see any internal motivation. In the books, he has an inner grace (I'm thinking here of the Anglican phrase: "The sacraments are an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace") that gives him strength and courage to keep up the struggle. That's more of a Thomistic (or Augustinian) attribute. You are given grace to draw upon in daily (or dire) struggles. The grace comes from God, but it is held within yourself. Calvinism would have that grace being from "without."

Tolkien even speaks of it outright in many cases. After Boromir tries to take the ring and Frodo has put it on to escape, he is seen/felt by the Eye on Amon Hen, which calls him to Sauron. We find later that Gandalf fights on his behalf, and the ensuing (internal) battle reads like this:

He heard himself crying out: Never, never! Or was it: Verily I come, I come to you? He could not tell. Then as a flash from some other point of power there came to his mind another thought: Take it off! Take it off! Fool, take it off! Take off the ring!

The two powers strove in him. For a moment, perfectly balanced between their piercing points he writhed, tormented. Suddenly he was aware of himself again. Frodo, neither the Voice nor the Eye: free to choose... (Fellowship, p. 404)

This deep internal struggle doesn't come across very well on screen. The force of will (the grace) he summons to defy Sauron is seen in the movies as events imposed upon him as opposed to through him. At the most, when we see Frodo make decisions, we get no sense of struggle when the decision is made.

So there's my foray into theology for the night. A pitiful attempt, I am sure, but that's all you get from a librarian dabbling in things beyond her ken.  ::grin::