Last week the ever-interesting Barbara Fister observed over on Inside Higher Ed, People are beginning to notice that big publishers are not really all that interested in authors or readers; they are interested in consolidating control of distribution channels so that the only participants in culture are creators who work for little or nothing and […]
So let me begin with a quote from a Project Information Literacy interview with Jeffrey Schnapp about the ongoing debate regarding the future of academic libraries: As far back as the libraries of Pergamon and Alexandria, libraries have combined functions of storage, sifting and activation. They have been places of burial, preservation and worship of […]
Part of that heading, attributed to Yogi Berra, is how I think about the research process, as I dig into all things New Zealand. The over-abundance isn’t so much about raw materials (books, articles, movies, websites, etc.) as the vast and discordant array of vehicles for all this stuff–a world that is also more contradictory, […]
My first ALA was Midwinter 1992 in San Antonio. It was the usual First ALA: immersive, bewildering, awesome, wonderful, daunting, and fun.But it was also an experience where I began learning and practicing my best conference etiquette. I have had some bad habits in my life: being too hard on others and myself; rushing to […]
Sometimes we go in search of our New Year’s goals. Sometimes they are gifted to us. I will be one of the keynoters at the 2012 annual conference of the Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa (LIANZA). The conference is to be held in Palmerston North, New Zealand. I am thrilled not only […]
Jenica has a post about applying to academic library jobs well worth reading by anyone in the job market. But in my head I’ve been writing the following post for a very long time… so out with it. Once you have interviewed for a library position, you have established a relationship with that institution and […]
Here is a very interesting question others have posed: are libraries that license ebooks through Overdrive violating state patron-privacy laws because Amazon retains user data? (For context, Sarah Houghton-Jan, who last spring proposed an eBook User’s Bill of Rights, recently taped a video recording her thoughts about the Overdrive-Amazon deal enabling Overdrive books to be […]
Two years ago today (Sunday, October 30) I started my journey as a library director at Cupcake U (as I sometimes call My Place Of Work). These first two years have been exhilarating, challenging, growth-inducing, hair-graying, mind-bending, mirth-generating, and never boring. (I’m always surprised when librarians say budgets are boring. There’s nothing boring about money! […]
Early in August I attended the Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I returned just in time to get out my Orientation surfboard, on which we ride the waves of a new school year, heroically finishing summer projects (hi, WorldCat Local! Hello, Overdrive! Howdy, new website!), welcoming new students […]
This is a bummer of a job market for librarians, and if you’re fresh out of library school you are probably crying in your beer, wondering why you didn’t get a degree in something practical and career-oriented, like medieval cookery. But a few months back a newish librarian asked me in frustration why she was […]