Went to Freelance Camp TO almost 2 weeks ago, and was very impressed by the speakers and the crowd the event drew. So first off, I’d like to express a major thank you to all the organizers, sponsors and volunteers!

I met a lot of interesting people and again, I found I was the only MISt present. (Note to info professionals: if we want people to understand the value of what we do, we really need to get out more! And don’t be shy. When I went to the Health 2.0, everyone I met admitted they love librarians.)

Anyways, being the informationista that I am, I have compiled a handy bibliography after the “cut” based on resources from the Toronto Public Library. Resources here focus on beginner freelancers but some resources should be useful to all levels; please feel free to leave suggestions in the comments as well!

Freelance Bibliography @ TPL

last update: November 9/10

Databases & E-Resources

Marketline: Marketline is a very powerful and expensive database and a boon for freelancers conducting market research. It is an excellent source of business information with company profiles (scope out your competitors and learn from their strategies), industry profiles (learn where your industry is headed), and country information. Reports are current and easy to read, providing PESTLE, 5 Forces and SWOT analysis. UPDATE: Marketline is now merging with another database (Business Insights) to become Datamonitor 360. Finding the same information on the new interface is a bit tricky. Feel free to leave me a tweet @cyborgess if you need any help!

FP Advisor: Great source for Canadian business information. It’s a database that requires a bit of exploration as there are databases within this one database. For starters, you can use this database to search for industry information.

Canadian Business & Current Affairs: Research industry news or find older information on this database. Hint: use the link near the top of the database to select multiple databases at once to search in and save time! Also consider Canadian Newstand or CPI.Q.

E-STAT: Census information will help you understand demographic trends for your business. Also see Canada’s 2006 census.

Market Share Reporter: An invaluable resource. Exactly what the title says. A powerful compilation of stats, with the sources provided. Know your competitors!

Books

My So-Called Freelance Life: A well organized how-to guide written in a friendly, witty style. Jam packed full of great hints and tips. Geared toward women, which is reflected in design and writing style, but still has relevant information for men. Bonus point: it’s small enough to slip into your purse for subway reading.

The Accidental Entrepreneur: A concise how-to guide with great advice, lists and exercises to guide you in thinking more in depth about your own freelance style, set concrete goals for yourself and learn what business strategies are best for you.

The Money Book for Freelancers, Part-Timers and the Self-Employed: An excellent resource full of very handy checklists and templates to help you budget your business and get organized about your finances. If you are hesitant to approach managing the dry stuff like taxes, this book is highly recommended.

Business Plan, Business Reality: Although this is geared more toward small business owners than freelancers, this book is comprehensive in scope and chock full of helpful information and factors you should consider. Like The Money Book, this resource has all manner of templates for logistics, finances, etc. that you can use/photocopy. A great intro to topics like marketing, insurance, legal considerations, and it’s all Canadian info.

N.B. TPL also has a lot of industry specific freelancing books for journalism, editing, design, etc.

And now I’m turning this post over to you. Do you have any favourite books, magazines, websites, blogs, Twitter feeds, etc. about freelancing? Please consider adding that in a comment below. Thanks!

I have no doubt that serendipity through algorithms and filtering through your social networks are wonderful ways to improve the signal to noise ratio online. However, I’m a little disturbed by our decreasing access to the randomness that I loved so much about the internet (which is why I’m interested in randomized places like chatroulette).

I know what my online friends like and think because, well, they’re my friends. Or they’re friends of friends, or share an offline reference point that was probably not public nor random. The information that comes from these filters are not necessarily forming an echo chamber, but it is familiar. And yes, that familiarity does often imbue the information with a high degree of relevance.

But I also want to know what people who are not like me think. I want to know what those outside of my various frames of reference find relevant. I want to easily access voices and narratives that have been silenced, marginalized and forgotten. There’s only so much I can gain out of discovering news, information and media when everything is based on what I already like and who I already know. And when online relevancy is predetermined by offline relevancy, I worry that the online world will come to exhibit more and more closely, the same power dynamics and normalizations we find offline.

As much as personalization improves relevance, I’d also like spaces online where Charlaine Harris is no more relevant than Christine de Pizan, Quentin Tarantino no more relevant than Takashi Ito, Lady Gaga no more relevant than Ladytron. But more importantly, maybe us N. Americans will learn more about the vast and unfamiliar world out there. Maybe we will stop referring to Africa as a country and be able to identify Bhutan, Estonia, Afghanistan and countries we have armed forces in on a map. Maybe we can listen and learn from other cultures and other communities and other time periods.

In an early cyberpunk film, Ghost in the Shell, the protagonist claims, “The net is truly vast and infinite.” Let’s keep a part of it that way.

Recently I’ve been analyzing and categorizing the search queries in a public library database and was blown away by the types of queries I came across. Although there were a few truly bizarre and amusing search strings – nothing new, having perused the search strings for my own website – what fascinated me were the common mistakes. The instinct that many people have developed to type keywords in the most prominent and available search box. The use of natural language (e.g. How do I grow herbs?). Operators that don’t apply. The infrequency of searching by using metadata. And so on. Ultimately, we’re going to try to put research findings to good use to improve search for public libraries.

I still remember the day I was assisting a grad student research articles in Japanese studies. I hadn’t applied to my Masters program yet but was familiar with the catalogue he was using. He had no idea that there were a number of different databases to search on his topic and that each database had its own structure and logic. That’s when it dawned on me that I think and research differently than other people, although at that time I didn’t realize that I was thinking like a librarian!

Ariadne, the woman who guided Theseus through the labyrinth of King Minos

For so many years, we’ve been told how the internet has made libraries obsolete but it seems to me that being able to guide others through our ever growing sea of information will prove to be one of the most valuable skills needed in any field of employment.

I recently read Randy Connolly‘s The Persistence and Rise of the Technological Community Ideal, in which he traces the history of the distinctly American vision of a utopic society populated by technologically connected citizens living in far flung geographic spaces. He draws his conclusions from a variety of technologies, from canals and telegraphs to online communities. It’s worth reading just for the awesome quotes, some of which are downright evangelical.

I’m willing to bet that there is also fertile ground to do historical research with American records in the opposite vein – technophobic and perhaps fire and brimstone like proclamations – by which some of the very same technologies Connolly writes of are also described as the downfall of society, the erosion of humanity and the sign of the beginning of the end. (On a side note, not even the most fearful of the internet would have probably predicted the awful yet strangely awesome rise of Teh Interwebs and all its shocking artifacts…) This is a narrative where technology alienates people from each other and from any sense of community, strips them of their ability to analyze, create and emote, breeds an amoral vacuum.

I’ve read so much theory about the net from a variety of angles and it seems that even today, it is difficult for people to move beyond the technolust-technophobic binary. Coupled with the American fantasy that we can have “better living through science” is the inverse fantasy in which slaves/robots turn against their masters. There exists a pseudo Luddite mentality that almost recognizes the economic forces shaping technology, yet this is displaced in a kneejerk distrust of technology rather than any direct criticisms of modernity and its metanarratives. Or in the case of cyberpunk, these links are made more explicit, but resolutions to conflicts born of these links are evasive. Perhaps we have a tendency to project our hopes and anxieties about modernity onto technology and to ascribe a greater influence to technology because it’s easier to do this than to critique and/or resist modern systems like democracy and capitalism. Perhaps we will always yearn for a utopic deus ex machina to solve all of our problems.

Although I wasn’t expecting to speak to anyone about information studies, I did end up discussing constructing subjectivity and self online, public vs commerical internet space, and social capital. Continental philosophy is often criticized for being too jargon laden, lacking in “seriousness” etc. and I have seen this to be the case at times. However, the theories I have read that have most helped me to understand the “real world” – in particular to understand democracy and the nation state – come from the continental tradition.

Being in a professional program, I find students often are frustrated with theory, most often because the theories they study do not acknowledge the day to day obstacles, compromises and lack of resources required to consider or apply theory. However, the idea that the practical world is wholly objective and divorced from theories, that notion that theory is a foreign entity that must somehow be overlaid onto practice or “applied to” is inaccurate and leads people to believe that by solely focusing on practice, they are functioning in some kind of “ideology-free” space where the values and things of their practice are simply what they are (always have been and always will be). Perhaps we could stop thinking of theory and practice as binary opposites, but rather, consider them as entities that interpenetrate each other and are inseparable.

“Can Community Informatics happen in a community when the community is a cacophonous community? Within this question lies a host of other questions, such as can community informatics happen when state government officials do not support or desire to fund initiatives by community members to cure social ills? Or when rural areas of a community are located an hour away from the urban areas where special interest and grassroots organizations often forget about them? At what point is it impossible for CI to happen?”

Read the full post here.

While Dyer-Witheford proposes this perspective of the appropriation of free labour, he also acknowledges that monetizing 2.0 and mobile applications has been notoriously difficult (even by selling that digital presence to advertisers and dataminers), a serious problem for the capitalist end of things. I still remember when I was giving presentations about youth usage of online applications, being frequently asked, “Yes yes yes, but how are we going to make money off these unapologetic pirates?” Well, maybe not in those exact words. The industry was pretty much stymied when it came to figuring out how to generate a decent revenue stream, irritated that young users defied the application of older business models, reduced to hawking ring tones and little icons.

It seems to me that in addition to the structure of the net, which as Dyer-Witheford describes, favours models of openness over property and constantly circumvents state/centralized control, a certain evasiveness is a key component of internet culture itself (that is, cultural artifacts generated completely online) and is also a factor in resisting appropriation/commodification. The lifeblood of the Intarweb, its various memes, viral videos, and bizarre and often highly specific subcommunities are so fleeting, so random/aberrant, and so dependent upon the sharing/community aspect of web 2.0 that commodification of popular user generated content is perhaps, nigh impossible.

Whether all these evasive efforts can in their totality, aggregate into a form of networked/swarm resistance a la emergent, optimistic Multitude cited by Dyer-Witheford remains questionable for me. The pillar of exploitative production must be matched by its twin:  rampant, optimistic consumerism. Despite internet culture’s inanity, or perhaps because of it, I can’t help but be reminded of JG Ballard’s Kingdom Come which offers by contrast a different kind of optimism: an emergent mass voluntary insanity of consumerism and violence driven by immaturity and boredom:

“Modernism taught us to distrust and dislike ourselves… Modernism was driven by neurosis and alienation… [Consumerism] celebrates coming together… It’s driven by emotion, but its promises are attainable, not just windy rhetoric. A new car, a new power tool, a new CD player… Consumerism is a collective enterprise. People here want to share and celebrate, they want to come together. When we go shopping we take part in a collective ritual of affirmation…”

“And reason? No place for that, I take it?”

“Reason, well… It’s too close to maths, and most of us are not good at arithmetic.”

Right now, web 2.0 represents that kind of Ballardian bored, compulsive, addictive and wholly irrational levels of consumption that are a venture capitalist’s ideal world even if we have amputated a critical part of the capitalist equation of alienation by consuming in a frenzy what we have ourselves directly produced… Can web 2.0 really be a platform for organization and resistance, when so much of it seems to reproduce values of consumptive desires and instant gratification?

Well, these are some preliminary thoughts, I apologize in advance for their haphazardness. I’ll have to go back and reread some Multitude and ponder over this a bit…

from to bear witness

One of the greatest conflicts I experience in my work that has no resolution in sight, is the tension between serving communities and working within the structures of state power. One of the starkest examples I can offer is the misapplication of state funding in community projects, which I have seen wasted due to a variety of reasons including mismanagement, corruption, and by far the worst: stringent and/or impractical deliverables imposed by the funding parties or institutional bodies that work at cross purposes with the needs of community members for the purposes of accountability.

What I have read about Community Informatics and its community led approaches and values fascinates me because you really cannot escape state power. It seems to me that the spaces by which a community can resist and challenge the state, or negotiate and debate institutional policies erode in proportion to the size, degree and quality of threat a community or CI project creates. There is a limit at which compromises are no longer tenable.

A couple of real life examples:

In March – May 2009, Tamil Canadians in Toronto organize a series of protests which slow downtown traffic. In one protest, participants refuse to leave a spontaneously organized blockade of a major traffic artery until the federal government agrees to raise the issue in Parliament. The Canadian public expresses mixed reactions including an understanding of the plight of Sri Lankans, a disapproving of protesters’ actions which hinder their daily lives, and a condemnation of protesters who would seek Canadian governmental action, especially when some protesters have flown the flag of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a listed terrorist organization.

In October 2005 – October 2006, Six Nations community members organize protests and blockades on Caledonia, Ontario. Although the land claims disputes have not been settled by the federal government, Henco Industries plans to develop in the area. The Ontario provincial government tallies the cost for managing the protests and buying out Henco Industries in the millions.

A couple hypothetical examples of state vs community:

A geographically isolated community with high rates of HIV infection plans to develop an abstinence-only education program for youth using mobile technologies. Local religious beliefs regarding HIV/AIDs are included in programming which stigmatize and discriminate against those who have tested positive for the virus.

A local activist group uses Twitter to organize a pro-life rally in a public area nearby an abortion clinic. Participants do not engage in hate speech or harassment, but their presence is felt as intimidating and disrespectful by both staff and patients.

I began thinking a lot about Pro-Ana communities because many of them present the typical characteristics of a sustainable, community led CI project despite fierce opposition as they also present harsh criticisms to state patriarchal/medical knowledge. But more importantly, these communities also challenge the right of the sovereign to take life. The self determinatory path of anorexics, a trajectory which concludes in death (anorexics have the highest death rate of all DSM-IV disorders), vehemently resists the surveillance and control of the state over the body. As such, the violent reaction toward these communities – disgust, censorship, eradication – seems to be less about a concern over a mental disorder, and more about the various threats posed by the communities.

The emaciated visibility of the anorexic body, echoed in the forms of popular female models and actresses, threaten the inherent goodness of gender norms, and legitimacy of patriarchal and medical control over the female body and reach the limit of biopower: the right for a citizen to choose death. Pro-Ana communities ultimately cannot be accepted in a CI framework as it stands.

Pro-Ana presents an extreme example, but what about other community led projects like the examples above that may present real, practical challenges to state functioning, control and power? Do you know of any?

On my end, I’ve been quite busy, already gearing up for the next semester. I’ll be the new student liason for CASLIS next year, am exploring strengthening student ties with APRA, and am happy to say that I’ve reconnected with TIG, as a consultant again, but this time regarding donor/gift development. On a side note about prospect research, the amount of publicly available information about donors is really incredible. Is there a word for the issues arising from aggregating personally identifiable public data? If not, there really should be. We still frequently call this a “privacy” issue, which is a total misnomer.

I’m also excited to be going to the CLA conference this year. My advice to new students regarding conference grants is to apply, apply, apply. Your chances of receiving funding are excellent. Also, if you are nervous about going alone or networking alone, just think that many people in attendance are friendly, helpful librarians! I really can’t imagine a nicer crowd to network with. I’ve found that people in the library field are usually supportive of new professionals and are generous in nature – so you can dispel any preconceptions about conferences being an exhausting schmooze-fest and get excited about meeting people who want to share their work and expertise with you. So keep your eyes on your inbox and apply already!

Archon is open source, and it’s pretty easy to use once it’s been installed. It works very well with photos, although I had other classmates who experienced difficulty with trying to upload audio content. I’ve been discussing this system with the head librarian at the special Spadina branch at the TPL, and we’ll see if any northern aboriginal organizations I get in touch with might find this a useful solution. Go F/OSS! [update: No volunteer labour allowed at TPL's Spadina branch unfortunately!]

2. Have been slowly working towards a fundraiser for the SHSS library w/the Child & Youth Advocacy group at my faculty. The first thing I want to buy the students is the Twilight series! And Halo books. On a side note, I finally learned how to play Halo and have no idea what kind of appeal a Halo BOOK would have, but it was honestly the only thing I could convince the younger male students @ SHSS to read. [update: A whole slew of books were shipped up. Apparently the Twilight ones have flown off the shelves!]

3. I’m working on a paper that I hope to eventually submit to our faculty’s open source journal. For some reason, my profs have always assumed that I was going to pursue the academic track, speaking as if academia was some kind of inevitability to me, as natural as aging. But despite my theoretical bent, my goals have always been advocacy, community outreach, etc. Working with organizations like TakingITGlobal, the Inuvik Youth Centre, etc. Theory has really informed that type of practical work for me. Obviously not directly, but certainly from an ideological/philosophical perspective, the influence of which is very profound. [update: I changed my mind and decided to submit a different article to FIQ]