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Re: Thanks HN

#11

Post by gruseom »

petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

Most university libraries in Canada are open to the public. I didn't realize how much I should appreciate this. My partner and I work at the nearby (well, by Canadian standards) uni library once or twice a week. I look forward to those times. We even went through a couple-month period of going there every day, but that had too much time-overhead.

Re: Thanks HN

#12

Post by dnlk »

petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

At my university everybody can just walk into the library during normal hours. After that, you need a (photo id) library card (which you can get right there in the library for 10 euros). This card not only allows you 24 hour access to the building itself, but to also loan books, get access to journals and newspapers, etc... I certainly can't speak for every university library here in germany, but I have so far seen quite a few (visiting friends all over germany), where this is common practice (I do not know about getting a library card there, though).

Re: Thanks HN

#13

Post by paxswill »

petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

In the US it depends, but I'd venture a guess and say most public university libraries are open at least regularly to the general public. Most of the schools in my state are on this [1] list, and most law libraries I've encountered are also open to the public as well. After hours access is usually restricted to those with a library card though.

[1] http://www.gpoaccess.gov/libraries.html

Re: Thanks HN

#14

Post by pace »

petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

What I learned about this new library afterwards: it was allowed before it got too crowded and university members couldn't get workplaces anymore (they have about 1,250 places and 30,000 students). So now, you can enter the library as a non-student, rent books but you are not allowed to use the workplaces (they check at times if your student-id is laid out on the desk but they didn't when I've been there)

Re: Thanks HN

#15

Post by ricree »

impendia wrote: post #10
petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

I can't speak for Germany, but in the United States practices vary. You can't just walk into the library at the University of Wisconsin, but at North Carolina State you can.

Even in the case of Wisconsin, it looks like state residents can get a membership on a reasonably cheap yearly fee. Though I didn't see it mentioned, I'd assume this would include building access during normal hours. (Though perhaps that's a bad assumption?)

http://library.wisc.edu/visitors/borrow.html#wiscres

Informally, I checked the websites of a handful of state universities, and all had some way for residents to obtain borrowing privileges. It's far from a comprehensive survey, and I may be wrong in my assumption that borrowing privileges would allow normal building access. Still, at first glance it seems promising.

Re: Thanks HN

#16

Post by ImprovedSilence »

petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

I grew up in a US college town. As a high school student (or any state resident I think) I could just go in and get a library card, and check out books. Anyone can get into the library, even without a card. Some caveats, it's a public university, and the main library was wide open, but there are also several small libraries strewn about campus (engineering, geology, chemistry, etc) that you may or may not have to swipe to get into. I think once you get a card, you can get in though, as I remember getting a card to getin into the earth sciences library for a high school project.

Re: Thanks HN

#17

Post by yurka »

In my experience, simply changing environments may cause an increase in productivity. Even if the new environment isn't strictly better, you still get a boost until you get acclimated. This might be crazy, but some sort of random rotation between various work environments might yield a sustained improvement in productivity.

Re: Thanks HN

#18

Post by shabble »

yurka wrote: post #17

In my experience, simply changing environments may cause an increase in productivity. Even if the new environment isn't strictly better, you still get a boost until you get acclimated. This might be crazy, but some sort of random rotation between various work environments might yield a sustained improvement in productivity.

There's the fairly well-established Hawthorne Effect[1] when applied to measuring productivity in others, but I'm not sure how well it would apply to self-analysis since you actually know the details of what you're studying.

Quoting:

Changing a variable usually increased productivity, even if the variable was just a change back to the original condition. However it is said that this is the natural process of the human being to adapt to the environment without knowing the objective of the experiment occurring.

Unless you're measuring against some concrete metric though, there's potential for misinterpreting a feeling of increased productivity vs actually achieving it. Also, you may be more motivated since you know you're measuring your output.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect

Re: Thanks HN

#19

Post by matsur »

impendia wrote: post #10
petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

I can't speak for Germany, but in the United States practices vary. You can't just walk into the library at the University of Wisconsin, but at North Carolina State you can.

You _can_ just walk into the library at the University of Wisconsin. There is only one library on the Madison campus (Memorial Library) that requires an ID to enter. That leaves 49 other libraries on campus open to anyone.

Re: Thanks HN

#20

Post by xer0 »

bergie wrote: post #8
zdw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I'm disconnected, I tend to just leave a bunch of comments in code with ONLINE in them and what I need to look up and recover my train of thought. I then switch to working on a different part of the program, or a different program altogether, and come back to them when I'm next online. This has worked pretty well for me so far, as long as I'm not under a time crunch.

That is a good point. Another tag like TODO and FIXME :-) I've noticed that I eventually get "push anxiety" when I work offline for longer periods. Once we even had to do a detour on a road trip from Poland to Helsinki to stop by a colleague's office in Sweden to be able to push code I had written on the way. I guess I simply don't trust my laptop...

Push anxiety, excellent.:w I suffer from write anxiety.:w I've been helping someone learn to program,:w and as I watch him write code I feel more tense the longer he goes:w without writing his file.:w When I mentioned this as a matter of human interest,:w and as an introduction to why you should save often,:w he laughed.:w I'm quite confident I will have the last laugh on him before he truly learns that lesson.:wq
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