Free Range Librarian

The personal detour
I’m back from giving the closing talk at SOLINET’s annual membership meeting, where I was well-pampered by all involved. I also rented a Prius for the trip, and it was quite difficult to return this lovely car to Avis. I had wondered how I would like driving a Prius, and the answer is [...]

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So I was tagged for this meme by Sarah “LibrarianInBlack” Houghton, in which through captioning a photograph we meditate on what we’re passionate about “kids” learning.
The meme responses I’ve read are all well-intended, and I like Sarah’s caption, but — I am sorry, my bibliofriends and edubloggers, I realize this is not very affirming of [...]

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A long-overdue post about the best of the best from Connecticut Trendspotting, NISO Discovery, a Kent Campus visit, and Computers in Libraries. (I have since attended IA Summit and Florida Library Association…more about them later!)

Quick Takeaways:

Clearest tech trends rippling through the presentationsphere: mobile interfaces, intelligent folksonomies, open source
Favorite presentation: Helene Blowers, Computers in Libraries, [...]

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I’m on my way to the Texas Library Association annual conference, where I will square off in the ring with the likes of Stephen Abram, Roy Tennant, and Joe Janes for a “Great Debate.” Good luck guys, I plan to mop the floor with you!
So as I mosey westward, here are some links for your [...]

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This is about two women, a blog, and a statewide mentoring program.
I recently had to write a midway review for my participation in the 2007-2008 Sunshine State Library Leadership Institute — also known as the “mentoring program.”
Mentors are like favorite aunts. We can hone in on helping our mentees with a focus that isn’t always [...]

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The Library of Congress posted a Webcast about their marvelous Flickr project. Also see their FAQ, which lists the technical details.
Peter Murray (aka “Disruptive Technology Library Jester”) has a good roundup of OPAC replacements and wrappers from his excellent presentation at the NISO “Next Generation Discovery: New Tools, Aging Standards” conference last week.
In LibraryThing you [...]

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News sources report that Gloria Won, a health librarian at UC San Francisco, played a key role in alerting LibraryLand that POPLINE, a federally-funded health database, was blocking the word “abortion.” Won, noticing that her search results weren’t retrieving anything for “abortion” (an odd result in a database for “reproductive health”) had written POPLINE.
The word [...]

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For Computers in Libraries 2008 (common tag: CIL2008), where I’m the emcee for a two-session program, “From Woepac to Wowpac,” I’ve received several messages encouraging me to “start adding content to the SWIFT platform.” Like slides, blog posts, delicious tags… the stuff I generally post here.

I took a look at SWIFT when it was first [...]

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(Sorry, I just had to rhyme.)
Library Journal has announced its annual Movers and Shakers, and it’s a very good batch. Unfortunately, LJ’s website is so kabobbled that you’re best off exploring M&S 2008 through Jessamyn’s short list or Connie Crosby’s longer list.
I was the “second” on the nomination for Tim Spalding, so I’m passing out [...]

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[update: Mr. Baker apologized -- see comment below. That was very nice of him.]
I was laughing in spite of myself through Nicholson Baker’s essay about Wikipedia (agreeing with him on many points, and yet irritated that such a biblio-retro could make me chuckle) when I read:
Someone recently proposed a Wikimorgue—a bin of broken dreams where [...]

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