Hello All,
A Collection of Gary-isms, to ease today's pain:
On overdue videos:
“A 400 buck fine almost always gets the stuff back.”
“For lost or "permanently misplaced" items, we charge retail cost of
replacement...faculty, grad student instructors, Nobel laureates,
doesn't matter.”
On illegal copying by faculty:
“Tell the faculty member you'll bake him/her a nice cake with a file
in it when he/she becomes cellmates with Martha Stewart...”
On inadequate classroom equipment:
“Since I am (thank the gods of media) not responsible for classroom
equipment, there's really nothing I can do except fume and plead.”
“...I dunno about other academic institutions, but at Berkeley, a good
number of classrooms don't even have window shades, let alone
projectors that will do justice to Blu Ray.”
On fair use:
“Well, unfortunately, there is no nice, tidy, fair use cookbook recipe
for most of this stuff. ”
“Well, whether there's a problem or not depends on how wild and wooly
your institution is in interpreting fair use.”
On work:
“Hullo all (and don't we all fall down on our knees and thanks the
stars it's Friday)”
“Yo ho, maties! ('m feeling positively pirate-y today, for some reason)”
“Thanks God for a discussion thread NOT about copyright... OK...here's
my 2.5 cents (damn, I miss the cents key on the keyboard!): “
“Now, I'm not saying that Berkeley is typical (I would NEVER say that
Berkeley is typical), “
On independent producers:
“if the small guys with cool stuff go away, God help us all.”
On tiered pricing:
“I've been mulling over the spate of recent posts re tiered pricing,
etc. Mulling and stewing (sorta sounds like holiday dinner, don't it?) “
On media use:
“you can talk about forcing faculty to reserve in advance all you
want; you can try to predict probable forthcoming need based on past
use patterns. It's still a crap shoot. “
On unversity administrators;
“You're boss is sorely deluded...Hers is, I'm afraid, the kind of
bubbly administratorspeak that's based less on insight and real
knowledge and more on on buzz and other ill-gotten notions picked up
banging around the infosphere...”
“I think there is an almost universal perception (outside of our small
professional clique) that the specialization is no longer really
needed (if it ever was). This, of course, is utter bushwah...but
tell that to administrators closely watching the bottom line. ”
“Where to start? So much stupidity, so little time to vent...”
On multi-region machines:
“Get another Senior Purchasing agent...or have her (him) show you the
law that says these machines are illegal.”
On streaming media:
“Again, my major concern in all of this is the potential of sliding
toward the procrustean...the tendency to cut of the head and the feet
to match the size of the bed.”
“By the way, in my experience, students don't really give a two-penny
damn about image quality, in most instances. These are folks (like my
daughter) who will watch a 90 minute feature film on their iPhones. “
“I think it is becoming increasingly common for technology to dictate
content, and that's a really nasty direction to take. Library
administrators and tech salesmen aren't always that far apart in their
witting (or unwitting) buy-in to this trend.”
On subject lists:
“OK...this thing has gotten completely out of hand...I'm stopping
now...really...I mean it....I'm still open for suggestions, but just a
crack...”
“No the be-all and end-all, but at least it's something.”
On responding too fast to a VideoLib post:
“I'm starting to confuse myself...I can imagine what I'm doing to you
all...”
On sharing with VideoLib a video he made for a documentary class:
“(yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah...copyright blah blah blah...write it off
as my inclusion here as part of valid criticism and commentary)”
On media collections:
“We should all have the motto: "It's the CONTENT THAT COUNTS"
tattooed on our forearms...”
On A Fair(y) Use Tale Mash-up:
Faden should be carried around on all of our shoulders. He's my new
hero!”
Finally:
“I know a lot of my pals on this list have different opinions, based
on local need and circumstance...so let er' rip...”
“In any case, your thoughts and comments would be interesting and
appreciated!”
“Keep calm and carry on.”
“Gary (who is headed off shortly to an unpretentious little pinot and
an emailess weekend)”
Thank you, Mr. Handman.
Brigid Duffy
Academic Technology
San Francisco State University
San Francisco, CA 94132-4200
E-mail: [email protected]
VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of issues
relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic control,
preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in libraries and
related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve as an effective
working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of communication
between libraries,educational institutions, and video producers and
distributors.
