professional

Concordia University Ann Arbor, where I have worked two years as a Financial Analyst before accepting my current position as Director of Campus Life. Small college, good people, great students, beautiful campus.

As predicted in 36.6 Pounds of Books, the U-M Inter-Library Loan department sent me an e-mail informing me that they already own the article I requested. Therefore, they were happy to cancel my request for me. I then had to reply providing documentation for how they don't actually own it and that their computer hasn't been updated in over 2 years, but I'm still not expecting to get the article anytime soon.

In other news, I'm writing this from the comfort of the Cyber Cafe at my local Pontiac dealer where I am waiting for the privilege of spending hundreds of dollars to repair my fuel gauge and cabin air intake. Oh well, at least they have free WiFi while I wait.

I spent today going between four of U-M's libraries tracking down over 20 books and articles. They were such a pain to lug all over the city that when I got home I decided to weigh them in order to quantify the burden I'd been carrying (yes, I'm a nerd). After putting them on the scale (in a couple batches to fit), they weighed in at 36.6 pounds--I can't wait to read every ounce of them.

Gathering all of these books was really a joy though, because the U-M library system has such phenomenal customer service. For example, one article that I really wanted was not in the stacks, so I asked at the Reference desk. The reference librarian was sure they should have it, so she directed me to the Serials/Microfilm desk. The work-study student in the Serials/Microfilm section was cheerily clueless and called her supervisor over to consult with me (though he didn't actually come over, he just hollered at me from his desk in the back--I guess he forgot the rule about using his "inside voice" in the library). Anyway, he told me that I had a Reference desk question and that the Reference desk never should have sent me to him. Therefore, I went back to my reference librarian, who looked at her computer again and said she thought they should have the journal and that I should check with the Circulation desk. So, I went down to the Circulation desk, where I was informed that I didn't have Circulation desk question, but my question was for the Serials/Microfilm desk.

So how was this good customer service you ask? Well, they didn't meet any of my needs, but they always denied me with a smile. Anyway, I decided just to request the article via Inter-Library Loan, but I'm sure that I will get an e-mail in the next day or two telling me that they can't get it via Inter-Library Loan, because U-M already owns the journal. Then, I will have to e-mail them explaining the situation (which I'll probably just cut-and-paste from this blog entry); they will take another couple days to verify my claim before processing my loan request. Finally, I will get the article via Inter-Library Loan, and I'm really looking forward to reading it--in about three weeks.

American Council on Education (ACE)

National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO)

University of Michigan News.

I was enjoying reading Qualitative Methods: Their History in Sociology and Anthropology until I came across the following sentence that is just ridiculously too long:

With the present abandonment of virtually every facet of what might now be recognized as the interlocked, secular, eschatological legacies of Comte, Tönnies, Wissler, Redfield, Park, and Parsons—that is, the recognition that the “comparative method� and the anthropology of primitism is inherently flawed by both its Eurocentric bias and its methodological inadequacies; the determination that the gemeinschaft of the little community has been subverted by the overwhelming force of the national political economy of the gesellschaft; the discovery that assimilation is not inevitable; and the realization that ethnic sodalities and the ghettos persist over long periods of time (sometimes combining deeply embedded internal disharmonies with an outward display of sociocultural solidarity, other times existing as “ghost nations,� or as hollow shells of claimed ethnocultural distinctiveness masking an acculturation that has already eroded whatever elementary forms of existence gave primordial validity to that claim, or, finally, as semiarticualted assertions of a peoplehood that has moved through and “beyond the melting pot� without having been fully dissolved in its fiery cauldron)—ethnography and ethnology could emerge on their own terms.

--Vidich and Lyman, page 56, Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd Edition)