Russian will not be the second language in Latvia

Yesterday was a very important day in the history of Latvia. We had a referendum about Russian becoming the second state language. The issue arose from the fact that there are still many people in Latvia who speak Russian as their first language. This question has been sharp since the collapse of USSR.

The problem is that many Russian speaking citizens don’t want to learn Latvian language. They are used to get all services in Russian and take that for granted. It gets even worse as many have the opinion that they are “discriminated” by people who speak only Latvian. This absurd situation led to political debates, and in the end to referendum about Russian becoming the second official language.

Fortunately this question was taken seriously and more than 70% of the eligible voters decided to take part. Not only people in Latvia but also many Latvians living abroad went to vote. In London, for example, there was a 2000 people queue. Me and my flat-mates went to “Straumēni” by car. We got there early so it didn’t take very long. I am proud of all people who decided to cross the “against” field in those bulletins.

The results are already known – almost 75% of the voters decided that Russian as a second language is a disgrace to the nation and voted against. But what about those 25%? What will happen next – it’s a hard question. The tension between people has been big for a long time.

My mother is from Russia and arrived to Latvia 25 years ago (USSR times) when she got married. She still has the alien passport (another disgrace of my country) and knows Latvian language in the basic conversation level. It’s not that she wouldn’t like to learn (she is an English teacher) but the government has done very little to stimulate the will of Russian speaking people to learn the language. I think that the solution would be free Latvian language courses for anyone regardless of their income, occupation or origin. And not only for Russian speaking people. I have a friend from Jamaica who moved to Latvia after getting married to a Latvian and she couldn’t get a job. She couldn’t find any Latvian course suiting her – living in the country side with a one-year-old child it was impossible. In my opinion, the perfect solution would be developing a free online course which could suit both Russian and English-speaking people. This way it would not cost too much and be a good legacy for the future. Making it interactive and interesting would make it more attractive for young people and easier to learn for elder.

I really hope that after the referendum the tension will go down and people will tolerate each other.

 

The joy of books

I saw this video today and would like to share it. I love books and reading, and this video made me smile.

Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

 

Resolution for 2012

Hopefully this will  be a successful year. I’m going to set only measurable goals:

1. Finish university
2. Attend LIS conferences – depends on how many I can afford
3. Go to Paris
4. Go home to Latvia for a couple of weeks
5. Finish my CPD23 as soon as I get rid of my masters dissertation
6. Continue Swedish language course
7. Travel more around UK – visit at least 6 different cities
8. Read 30 books (maybe even more)
9. Make 30 creative projects
10. Continue with our New Professional Section
11. Get all my electronic files in order, make lists, upload some old essays to student essay database (can earn some money with it)
12. Meet someone at least once in two weeks (my social life has suffered enough last year).
13. Make changes to my blog – make it specific, goal oriented and more consistent.

This list seems to meet SMART objectives and hopefully should be fulfilled by the end of 2012. And I really hope that they are wrong with the End-Of-The-World date .

 

 

Review of 2011

As usual, I like to make a personal review of the past year. 2011 was very busy for me. A lot of things were going on at the same time and planning had a crucial role. In 2011 year I:

• got engaged
• learned a lot of new skills that have practical use
• finished my studies and started writing masters dissertation in tourism
• travelled more than usual – mostly around UK (England, Scotland and Wales) but also I had a one week trip to Gran Canaria with my course and went home through Estonia for 6 weeks
• went to my first-ever wedding and got the honour to dress the bride, so I know what was under that dress
• was active during the first 6 months thanks to Anete – going to gym and eating healthy (need to get another buddy for the next year)
• read more books than the last year. As I got a Kindle for my birthday/Christmas I managed to read 4 books in 2  last weeks even with my though schedule
• actively took part in planning and writing articles for our LIS new professional group
• Went to two LIS (un)conferences in UK
• started CPD23 (I intend to finish it next year when I have more time and energy after getting rid of my dissertation)
• started this blog
• learned many new recipes and worked on many small crafts projects
• started Postcrossing and now postcards are a big part of may everyday life
• found many interesting links and websites like Postcrossing, Pintrest, Bookcrossing, etc.
• after 2 years break started learning Swedish again

So many big and small things were done. Altogether 2011 was a successful year for me. The new years resolution will follow soon

 

Traditional Latvian Christmas meal

Today we are celebrating Christmas and the most important part of the celebration is to get together and prepare some great food. I will share some of the most common and traditional recipes:

1) Stewed sauerkraut

Stewed sauerkraut

You will need:

• Sauerkraut – can be bought ready (in UK most common in Polish/Lithuanian shops)
• Onions
• Butter
• Tomato paste
• Spices: 1 bay leave, ground pepper, sugar

The preparation depends of your taste – there can be many variations. What I did was:

1. Fried the chopped onion in butter until golden brown
2. Added sauerkraut and a bit of water
3. Stewed the sauerkraut until turning brown
4. Added spices and tomato paste
5. Stewed everything for about 15 – 20 minutes

*you can get the more interesting result by adding bacon or orange juice

For the best result don’t use Teflon pans – the temperature will not be enough and you will spend the whole day in the kitchen. Metal pans on the middle heat work the best.

Stewed sauerkraut is usually served with boiled potatoes.

2) Gray peas with bacon and onion

Grey peas with bacon and onion

A very traditional Christmas food.

You will need:

• Grey peas
• Bacon
• Onions
• Butter

Preparation process is quite simple:

1. Peas should be left to soak overnight and boiled for about 40-60 minutes in salt-water.
2. Bacon should be sliced and fried until fat comes out.
3. Then add onions, fry until golden
4. Add the boiled peas and heat for about 3-5 minutes

Serve hot.

These dishes may not look very tempting but they taste so good. The mix of different flavours and amazing smell makes your mouth water.

 

God Save the Queen!

To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II:

In light of your immediate failure to financially manage yourselves and also in recent years your tendency to elect incompetent Presidents of the USA and therefore not able to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. (You should look up ‘revocation’ in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas , which she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, David Cameron, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated sometime next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘colour,’ ‘favour,’ ‘labour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix ‘-ize’ will be replaced by the suffix ‘-ise.’Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up ‘vocabulary’). (I love that one)

Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as ”like’ and ‘you know’ is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter ‘u” and the elimination of ‘-ize.’ ‘ (I love that one too)

3. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

4. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you’re not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can’t sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you’re not ready to shoot grouse.

5. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. Although a permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

6. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

7. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.)

8.You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

9. The cold, tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. New Zealand beer is also acceptable, as New Zealand is pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth – see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

10. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie Macdowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one’s ears removed with a cheese grater.

11. You will cease playing American football. There are only two kinds of proper football; one you call soccer, and rugby (dominated by the New Zealanders). Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).

12. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America . Since only 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the Australians (World dominators) first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

13. You must tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us mad.

14. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

15. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 p.m. with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.

God Save the Queen!

 

(Author unknown)

 

CPD23: Thing 14 – Zotero

To be honest, I’m a bit tired of all “useful” applications and addons. I know that tools like Zotero can be very useful but I just don’t have the trigger.

Zotero is an easy-to-use yet powerful research tool that helps you gather, organize, and analyze sources (citations, full texts, web pages, images, and other objects), and lets you share the results of your research in a variety of ways. Zotero integrates tightly with online resources; it can sense when users are viewing a book, article, or other object on the web, and—on many major research and library sites—find and automatically save the full reference information for the item in the correct fields. Zotero is easy to use and has some significant advantages.

Unfortunately not all websites are created in the way that Zotero can manage to recognise and the author or some other parts of a reference information can be missing. I have tried it out a little bit but I still have a feeling that I can manage without it – I know how to make all references for my dissertation and how to save bookmarks in a good old fashioned way. I like to keep everything in one place and use as less gadgets as possible.

Talking about research – I prefer to use Evernote and Word/ Excel documents to do the trick. I like to make nice folders in my X-marks account (just in case) and put all bookmarks there.  Everyone has a way to deal with such things and I still prefer old fashioned manual referencing and double checking.

 

CPD23: Thing 13 – Google Docs, Wikis and Dropbox

I have loads of electronic information to save and backup. Tools like Google Docs and Dropbox can be very useful and convenient.Also wikis can be helpful for saving information online and bringing information editing to a new level.

Google Docs

A nice way to access all documents online from any computer, as long as you have a Google account.  All documents can be accessed in one place and creating collections makes it easy to sort out the documents by their topic. I have used Google Docs for a group work at uni and can tell that the option to edit the document directly online is brilliant. You don’t have to send the edited version to everyone and there is no need to check which parts of the document have been edited by other members of project to put everything together. I haven’t tried out the sharing option but I assume that it works great for broad communication purposes. The biggest disadvantage of Google Docs is the speed. Sometimes it can take forever to upload or download the file. If I’m in a hurry, it makes me feel nervous. But the feeling of security  makes it worth waiting.

Dropbox

Another useful tool for backup and sharing information. I don’t use it that much but it was very helpful when I was writing my bachelor dissertation. I still have all files stocked there – it can bring up breeze of nostalgia . One of my friends asked me to join so that he can get more storage space and I did. I really like that it works just as any regular folder with advantage of being shared and retrieved online at any place. It works faster than Google and has a more convenient layout. It is easier to look through your documents.

Wikis

I like the idea of wikis but unfortunately they are not always the best choice of communication as not many people seem to like them. We have a JSS wiki for our New Professional Section but it didn’t work out too good. In my opinion the layout and appearance of wikis is still not so inviting and user friendly that people would enjoy adding and editing process. If all participants feel good about using wikis this could be a good solution for planning and maintaining events, projects and everyday communication.

 

LibCamp2011, Birmingham, UK

Last week I have participated Library Camp UK 2011. Main reasons were:

• It was free
• It happened in Birmingham
• I like un-conference format
• Librarians were asked to bring cakes to share

I couldn’t participate the events before or after the conference, but I still managed to meet some new people. It is always interesting to have a look around and find some people from events/conferences you have visited before. Librarians have very interesting sense of style that can vary from strict office-look to purple hair and weird accessories. They also have great sense of humour with ability to make up some new profession related phrases (“Go Book Yourself ” was my personal favourite from LibCamp). Also I got a small i-pad envy, as so many people were comfortably using them (but I still don’t think I would really need one).

One of the main activities at arrival was to look around and see how many interesting cakes have been baked by librarians.

Me and Dace also brought a fruit pretzel (Dace’s work of art). My favourite was the beetroot cake – mostly because it was the most original one. After such degustation sandwiches seemed redundant. I also liked that coffee supply was endless.

Un-conference format is perfect for development of new ideas and being involved.

“Library Camp was run as an “unconference” where participants decide on the programme at the beginning of the event, working on the principle that the sum of the knowledge, experience and expertise of the people in the room is likely to be greater than that of those on the stage at traditional conferences.
The idea is based on “Open Space Technology” (Harrison Owen) which has four main principles and one law:-

1. Whoever comes is the right people
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
3. Whenever it starts is the right time
4. When it’s over, it’s over

Law of two feet: If, during the course of the gathering, any person finds him or herself in any situation where they are neither learning nor contributing, they must use their two feet and go to some more productive place.”

As there are no presentations but only a lively discussion about participant recommended topics, there is no barrier between different social statuses or age groups. Everyone can feel equal. All have their own unique experience and it is interesting to share. There are several topics discussed at the same time and anyone can choose which could be the most interesting one. Each session gives many new ideas.

I the first session I chose discussion about Real Life Social Networks in libraries. The main point of discussion was the problematic situation in public libraries. It seems that there is still a lack of direct communication between librarians and patrons. Many librarians are too busy with other tasks and don’t pay enough attention to human communication factor. This problem could be solved with friendlier attitude and smiling. Zoning in the library is also an important part of making the library more welcoming for discussions and breaking stereotypes about being a “quiet place to store books”. Library users should be looked at as customers.

In the second session the discussion was about Games and Gamification in libraries. I think it is a great idea to make libraries gamer-friendly by allowing and organising game tournaments and setting special computers for playing games. Games should be looked at as a great tool for training and development of new skills. Libraries should develop simple games for teaching information literacy and how to use library catalogues and databases. Also reading could become a game – getting points for each book you read, special points for books from different fields of interest and extra points for comments. The possibilities are endless.

The third discussion was about Retail Techniques in libraries. Libraries should be looked at more as customer-oriented places. The same tricks that work on buyer’s psychology could work on library users. Putting books in more presentable way, zoning, special book displays, putting information material near the queuing area, self-service, putting baskets for borrowing books and many other ideas can be “borrowed” from shopping centres. Also 1 working day a month should be used for the librarians to become library users. It is a good way to spot errors. Eating and having coffee in the library should also be allowed as it doesn’t really cause too much problems. Learning café concept becomes more and more popular. It also helps to change the rusty perception of what a library is. You can read more about this topic here.

Fourth session was less discussion based but not less interesting – about Wikipedia, Creative Commons and QRpedia. Main principles and ideas of using Wikipedia for putting articles about museum exhibits or  perhaps book authors was an interesting perspective. As suggested, everyone should “lose their Wikipedia virginity” by finding and correcting an error on Wikipedia. Interesting is the fact that Wikipedia has fewer errors than Encyclopaedia Britannica. People are also encouraged to send in open license material for the world to discover, it will also bring in promotional credit to the institution sharing their treasures. Another idea is to make QR codes with a link to Wikipedia articles. It can be used for promoting books, authors or exhibits. Of course, a good advantage of Wikipedia is the language variety.

In the last session Advertising Libraries was the main topic. It seems that many people don’t realise advantages of using a library. People are not aware of events and services provided by the local library. Much more effort should be put into outreach.It seems that too may people are just working in the library without any interest or passion and the staff training and attitude issues were brought up.  Social networks are a great way to promote libraries, but too much control over the librarians blogging or tweeting about libraries they work in can be a huge turn-off. Libraries should find a balance between formal approach and open-minded way of doing things.

Altogether the conference was a great success and I would love to participate in the next one.

 

Cycling for libraries

This year there was the first “Cycling for libraries” event which was a politically and economically independent international unconference and a bicycle tour for librarians and library lovers from Copenhagen, Denmark to Berlin, Germany May 28. –June 6. 2011.Video below shows the advantages and struggles of such interesting way of networking and bringing people together

You can also find out more about this event here