In One Place

It’s a strange obsession, this book collecting habit of mine. As I look at the shelf, I wonder why I hang on to the old beat up copy of Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth or even the new copy of Tony Horowitz’s Confederates in the Attic. In the case of the latter, part of the reason I’m keeping it is because I bought it at a small, private bookstore (the last of a breed) in a little town on the Northern Neck of Virginia. The store is called Twice Told Tales and I was on an outing with a friend of mine. I read Horowitz’s book right away–too appealing to put off–and loved it. I’ve been telling people about it ever since, especially the guy who could “bloat” and look like a dead Rebel along the side of the road. (Speaking of strange obsessions…)

The issue here is simply space. I live in 1200 square feet, most of my books have been in the garage for months and I honestly haven’t really missed them all that much. So, what about Teaching Lolita in Tehran? Or Nickled and Dimed? Or the books by Jasper Forde. I’m NOT going to reread most of them…goodness, I would never get to all the other ones if I started doing that! But to part with them? The paperbacks at least can go to the trade store so I’ll get more books (small paperbacks that hardly take up any space) in return. Although I once, in a similar fit of cleaning out, took a huge load to the trade store and they only wanted one! But lots of the paperbacks I have come from there (I just pay cash) so hopefully they will gladly accept those, and I will make an effort to just run a credit!

Many of the hardbacks are pop fiction that I got accidently from BOMC (getting out of that is also on my list) so I’ll bet the library would happily accept those and I wonder if I can ever think that I will get to them. I seemed to be mired in non-ficton and I can always check them out of the library. That’s it: the new rule is that I don’t buy any fiction! And I’ll get out of BOMC because then I won’t get more books I don’t need. I feel better already!

I am reading ahead for next semester, and for the leadership class, one of the assignments is to read the biography of someone we perceive to be a leader. I started with Mari Sandoz’s biography of Crazy Horse mostly because I had it and had been looking for an excuse to read it. I just finished Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford that I bought at the Island Bookstore in Corolla, NC, over Thanksgiving weekend. Interestingly enough, in his epilogue, Weatherford suggests that Crazy Horse and Genghis Khan share the plight of nomadic cultures when they clash with urban cultures:

“The clash between the nomadic and urban cultures did not end with Genghis Khan, but it would never again reach the level to which he brought it. Civilization pushed the tribal people toward the ever more distant edges of the world. Chiefs such as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse of the Lakota Siouz, Red Eagle of the Muskogee, Tecumseh of the Shawnee, and Shaka Zulu of South Africa valiantly but vainly continued the quest of Genghis Khan over the coming centuries. Without knowing anything about the Mongols or the Genghis Khan, these other chiefs faced the same struggles and fought the same battles across Africa and throughout the Americas, but history had moved beyond them. In the end, sedentary cultures won the long world; the future belonged to the civilized children of Cain, who eternally encroached upon th eopen lands of the tribes” (pp. 266-267).

Sandoz’s biography was written from the Native American point of view, which made it an interesting read. She gave enough “white man” details to be able to match it with historical battles but the reader got a much better sense of what was lost by the Native Americans.

The Weatherford book did not just cover Genghis Khan but also the whole Mongol empire. What was interesting was that someone that has been painted as a barbarian really had quite far reaching ideas about freedom of religion and the importance of government and policy. I thought about my policy class a couple times when Weatherford discussed Khan’s use of policy and propaganda to avoid warfare.

Here are the references:

Sandoz, Mari. Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1942. (My edition was published in 1992, the 50th anniversary and is still in print.)

Weatherford, Jack. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2004.

I am actively using Noter to do research for a paper and making minor cosmetic changes as I go such as sorting authors by lastname and putting the last name first. Here’s what I need in way of major additions pretty quickly: I need one page where the resource information is at top with any related notes and then all the quotes with their related notes are listed. I’ve already got a viewquotes page that shows the resource and the quotes but I need to figure out how to add the Notes. I would also like it if you could also do everything from this master page: edit, delete, view, add, etc. It’s all a matter of writing queries that match the correct ids, I believe. Nesting nested queries…for now I’m going to live with the inadequacy because frankly, the paper needs to get written. But I’m hoping to get to it this weekend.

I used the database to write a short piece for a group paper and discovered that I needed to have the page number of quotes appear. I also created a View Quotes choice in the Resource list that shows all the quotes related to a particular resource AND has the title at the top of the page. I would like to add the author and other biblio information so I have it on one screen. The volume, etc. won’t be hard because it’s in the same table as the title. The author will require another query related to the resource id: Hmm…I suppose you would create a function called show Authors and then have them show up. I’ve done this before I think. That’s the peril of having to do other things besides code: you lose track of the project somehow. For instance, I was thinking about the View Quotes feature and was pleased to discover that I had already created a View Notes option related to quotes. So I just modified a few field references and voila! I had a webpage.

I had a few hours between meetings and classes: just enough time to add a new table to the database. It stores information about institutions and will be part of the new author and new resource screens.

I also “fixed” the delete publisher, delete periodical, etc. screens to that they now delete the item as well as the resource associated with this. This is how it SHOULD work so you don’t end up with a resource assigned to a non-existent publisher or periodical. But it is also very scary and I’m wondering if it should just delete the publisher or periodical and then leave it up to the user to edit the resource and pick a different publisher.

I’ve been using the database pretty regularly and have a nice stash of resources, quotes and notes. I’m keeping a list of stuff to fix that ranges from making longer text fields for data entry to how to change the page title that shows up as Login to Noter on every page, and finishing up the edit resource page. OR I may just take the time to create separate book and journal data entry pages.

Well, I’ve solved the biggest problem I thought I had: the need for a None selection in the editbook pull-down menus. I added an echo statement that echoed “None Selected” when the periodical_id was 0. I had to put this before the while statement that created the pull-down menu or I got “None Selected before each periodical title.

I’ll admit to being pretty pleased with myself…it wasn’t as hard as I thought.

I’ve been actively using the database for a paper I have to write as well as just general data entry for resources I’ve had marked for ages just waiting for the creation of this database. It seems the best way to troubleshoot and think about what else I would like it to be able to do. Here’s a brief list:

• Add an institution field for the authors: and speaking of institution, it really should be a separate table where I can pick off a list so the data entry is consistent for the field. There is an institution field in the resource table as well and I could use the same table.
• Continue to add fields to the resource update field (editbook.php). I added pull-down menus for periodicals and types. I based them on the checkboxes for keywords and authors but in this case, it’s a one-to-one relationship. It took a little while to get the lists to appear and then to get them to show the correct periodical and type. I’ve solved all that but the continuing problem is that when you’re in the edit screen, the first periodical and publisher appear and when you press submit, their id numbers get written to the resource table. I could solve it through the database but creating a row called “None Selected” and choose that each time I enter a new resource but I wonder if there’s a way to do it with the code? I tried echoing “None Selected” when there was no id match but then the pull-down menu just displayed that instead of the periodicals and types. I’m wondering if I can write an if/else statement that says that if no match exists then the list should display “None Selected” but also providing all the choices.
• quotequery.php passes the id of the resource but is directed to the edit quotes page so the wrong quote appears. In the quotequery.php page, the edit/delete/add choices functions refer to the resource.
• Create a Views page that includes the various queries I’ve developed. And I need to continue to hone my formatting skills by incoporating html code and php echo statements.

There’s plenty more but that’s a good start…I’m going to watch Part II of The Fellowship of the Ring tonight and do some coding and then data entry.

Things I’ve Learned:

Choosing the right data storage type is important. I choose smallint for my quotespage field only to discover that it goes to 127. So, when I started entering page numbers that were larger than that, they defaulted to 127.

There are lots of other formatting issues.

As much as I like to be a citizen of the world, I’m pretty sure someone deleted stuff from my database. So, I found an easy script on the web to require a login and password. I think I still need to do some encryption but for now hopefully this will stall any would-be hackers. I want to start using the database for a lit review I’m writing.

Battled a headache all day so did relatively mindless programming: added data entry fields to the new book entry page. For now, it’s got all the fields from the resource table so it can be a generic data entry page.

I am teaching a Dreamweaver workshop this evening so I have to head out soon but wanted to post links to two more database queries that I’ve developed.

Author/Resource: Lists the authors and resources
Resource/Author: Lists the resources and authors

I struggled with the author query (even though I had already successfully created the resource query) because I was matching the ids of the author and resource so I wasn’t getting the right author/resource combination.

I’m also doing some behind-the-scenes troubleshooting to make sure that edits and deletes are not just being made in the main tables but also in the lookup tables. Last night, I discovered that, while the keyword edit/delete was working, the author was not so the links were still in the lookup table. I believe everything is working now but it’s just a reminder that even though things appear to working on the surface, the integrity of the database has to be maintained.