Meme: Passion Quilt & other delights

Posted by Chris Zammarelli on May 15th, 2008 in , and · 0 Comments

Der Struwwelpeter

I’ve posted a PDF of my thesis in the right sidebar. I think it’s safe to get psyched about graduation next week, although you never know if there’s some stray form that I didn’t know about that I never handed in. I won’t feel comfortable until I’ve actually got my diploma in my hand. I plan to carry it around with me wherever I go.

I’ve also finally started building the Advanced Content In State E-Gov section of the site. So far, I’ve added the methodology, glossary, and bibliography sections. I’ll be going through the old posts and adding links to the new pages as I add them.

Tara Murray of DIY Librarian tagged me in a meme called Passion Quilt. She writes, “The idea of the meme is to select a photo (your own or one released under a Creative Commons license) and add a caption to summarize what you want the kids to learn about.”

I’m going to be a bad memerist and not tag anyone else, mostly because I think anyone I would tag either has done it already or wouldn’t do it anyway.

Anyway, the title of the photo above is, “Dear kids: learn another language. Love, Chris.”

I don’t speak another language myself, although I did take French classes in high school. I never kept it up, so I can only speak it under extreme duress, like, say, when I’m trying to explain to someone that I’m having trouble keeping my rental car from rolling off a cliff.

I’d like to learn German, since my wife Jennifer has family members in Austria who only speak German. We have a son on the way and we’ve asked for a bunch of German children’s books for Christmas, so hopefully he and I can learn together.

Expanding the horizons & the parameters

Posted by Chris Zammarelli on May 1st, 2008 in and · 0 Comments

I finished my thesis yet again. Seriously, though, this time it is really finished. My thesis chair told me so. Of course, it’s not really finished, because state e-government sites keep changing. Damned perpetual beta™. Anyway, I am going to post a PDF of it here once I’ve submitted it to the registrar’s office and have received final approval from the school.

Also, I am going to be putting up permanent pages on the site for all the state e-gov site reviews. The posts I published on the blog were initial impressions and notes that I used when I was writing my paper. I’ve tried to make changes to the posts as portals and governors’ sites change or as I’ve updated my review methodology or what have you. But I don’t think it makes sense to keep going back and updating old posts on the blog.

Moreover, I want to have more the detailed analysis I did for each website online in a permanent spot. This way, when you see the scores for all the state government sites, you can read how I decided to score the sites. And also it’ll be easier for me to find the pages when I need to update them.

So, if you look at the Libraryola header above, you’ll see a link called “Advanced Content In State E-Gov.” Over the next few weeks, I will be creating pages for all 50 states and Washington, DC, and posting detailed reviews of the respective state government portals and governors’ sites in each one. I will have pages for the methodology, the table of scores, and the bibliography as well.

UPDATED 15 MAY 2008: Links to methodology and bibliography pages added.

I will include links to the new pages on all the old posts. For the posts that are crossed out, such as the rating system and state portals posts from the past month, I will probably just replace the text with a brief explanatory note. I’ll keep the review posts relatively intact, only deleting crossed out text, but including a note along with the link to the new review page.

As usual, I’ve probably given you more information than you really need. I just like to make sure every move I make on this blog is documented.

Thesis update

Posted by Chris Zammarelli on April 22nd, 2008 in and · 0 Comments

So the good news is that my thesis committee has accepted my thesis paper. The other news is that they accept it on the condition that I do some more work on the paper to better articulate my methodology and my analysis. Also, I need to have a title that’s grammatically correct. As careful as I was in the paper to make sure that I used criterion as the singular of criteria, I still titled my thesis Advanced Content in State E-Government: An Evaluation Criteria. Oopsy. So, my thesis is now called Advanced Content in State E-Government: Criteria for Evaluation.

By the way, remember those final scores for state government portals and governors’ sites I posted? Yeah, they’re going to change a bit shortly.

UPDATED 15 MAY 2008: Link to state government portal post removed.

Thesis defense on April 21

Posted by Chris Zammarelli on April 17th, 2008 in and · 1 Comment

I finished my master’s thesis… twice.  (Don’t ask.)  I will defend my thesis on Monday, April 21 in room 4113 of the Hornbake Building at the University of Maryland College Park.  If you’re in the DC area, I invite you to come on by.

“Final” rankings of state e-government sites: Portals

Posted by Chris Zammarelli on April 13th, 2008 in and · 1 Comment

As noted in the post “Thesis Update,” the scores here are going to be updated as per the notes I received during the defense. I’ve deleted the governors’ sites scores (more on that in a later post) and moved the comment that was added to that post to this post.

LexisNexis’ Best Practices 2008

Posted by Chris Zammarelli on April 11th, 2008 in , , and · 0 Comments

Chris sailing by the Petons

The 2008 edition of LexisNexis’ Best Practices book is now online at Government Info Pro. It’s called Best Practices 2008: Web 2.0 in the Workplace and Beyond [PDF], and I contributed two pieces to it. One is a brief summary of my thesis research (and it’s chockful of statistics that I’ve since updated), while the other is a combination of the two posts I wrote about the ALA pre-conference session “Careers In Federal Libraries” (part one and part two). Marie Kaddell, LexisNexis’ government info expert, asked me if I would write the thesis summary. Someone else suggested she include the “Careers In Federal Libraries” recap, which is pretty flattering.

Kaddell posted the table of contents on Government Info Pro. As chair-elect of SLA’s Government Information Division, I feel it’s my duty to recommend reading the pieces by Eileen Deegan, David McBee and George Franchois, because they are fellow DGI officers. Also, check out the article by Ned Kraft, who is the Acquisitions Team Leader at the U.S. State Department’s Ralph J. Bunche Library and a regular writer for the journal Against the Grain.

Glossary of terms

Posted by Chris Zammarelli on April 10th, 2008 in and · 0 Comments

UPDATED 15 MAY 2008: The contents of this post have been updated and moved to the “Glossary“ page of Advanced Content In State E-Gov.

E-gov evaluation rating system

Posted by Chris Zammarelli on April 9th, 2008 in and · 0 Comments

UPDATED 15 MAY 2008: The contents of this post have been updated and moved to the “Methodology” page of Advanced Content In State E-Gov.

Like sands through the hourglass

Posted by Chris Zammarelli on April 9th, 2008 in and · 0 Comments

I do not like deleting old posts, which you may have been able to figure out by all the posts in the archive that feature “updated” notes and struck through text. But, I decided to delete three posts that I wrote about the dataset I created for my survey of state e-government sites. I felt that the data was not sufficiently accurate. I’ve spent a lot of time carefully updating it, and I think it’s ready to get re-posted. I felt it would better serve everyone reading this blog that I publish new posts about the data rather than just updating the old ones.

The next post will be the updated version of the e-gov evaluation rating system. I’ll follow that up with posts discussing the data for the state government portals and the governors’ sites in detail.

Incidentally, I will be going through the individual E-Gov Site Review posts and updating the information in them. It would be completely and totally insane for me to repost all 51 reviews.

Like Mr. T, I need work

Posted by Chris Zammarelli on April 3rd, 2008 in · 0 Comments

I graduate from the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies with an MLS degree this May. I’m currently looking for a full-time reference or research librarian position. 

A couple of people have suggested to me that I should mention this fact on my blog in case someone who reads Libraryola is looking to hire a librarian with an ALA-accredited MLS degree.  Specifically a librarian with an ALA-accredited MLS degree named Chris Zammarelli.  (I’m the only one, incidentally.  The other Chris Zammarelli is majoring in environmental studies right now.)

So, if you manage a library staff at a government or other special library in the Washington, DC area and are looking for hire a librarian, please feel free to contact me.  To help you decide if I’m right for you, I’ve posted my resume on Libraryola. I have a LinkedIn profile as well.  Thank you for your consideration!

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