It was the end of the semester as I knew it, and I felt fine (Sr. Helen Prejean was our commencement speaker, and she was wonderful; you can watch her here, fast-forward to minute 22). Before I get into a little catch-up with the five of you still reading this blog, please note that our […]
The latest kerfuffle from LibraryLand comes courtesy Jeff Trzeciak, university “librarian” at McMaster’s, whose recent speech has garnered tart responses from other librarians and library directors (spoiler alert: count this as another notch on that post). I have this theory that an uncomfortably high percentage of research library directors are fundamentally very anxious about their […]
Through the benefits of modern technology, HarperCollins can finally be as greedy as it wants to be. As Library Journal broke yesterday, “In the first significant revision to lending terms for ebook circulation, HarperCollins has announced that new titles licensed from library ebook vendors will be able to circulate only 26 times before the license […]
Roy Tennant just posted a marvelous set of advice for new(er) librarians in Library Journal. To riff on his points, allow me to remind my Gentle Readers of my post about mentoring from 2008 (and if you liked that post, also see this one, about how mentoring was key to restoring my faith in myself […]
I promised that post-ALA I’d sketch up some technology trends I have observed, to complement the trendsetting discussions held elsewhere, such as LITA’s Top Tech Trends. “The Big Shift.” I had a number of mini-conversations with respected colleagues where we agreed that the adoption of ebooks and the shift from DVD to streaming was happening […]
Last week I briefly stuck my finger into a discussion about the future of libraries initially launched by Jason Perlow of ZDNet. Then I got busy with work and personal writing deadlines and pulled my finger back out. However, half of what I would have said was summed rather tidily in an anonymous comment on […]
Centralized mass storage for legacy print materials (paper-based books and journals) is by far the most under-observed trend in libraries today, so I was delighted to receive a memo from SCELC, the innovative consortium my library belongs to, outlining SCELC’s work with the WEST regional storage project and adding, “please also feel free to share […]
It’s Christmas morning and I have some quality blogging time for the first time since returning to California late October and starting my new job. I pick up Sandy in four hours, and between now and then, I will drink hot chocolate, go for a nice walk, and write about strategic plans. I have been […]
(Note, I am alone Christmas Eve, but Sandy joins me tomorrow–so excuse the holiday post!) Though I hate the slog of air travel per se, I do love flight, and my favorite moment is when the plane lifts above cloud level, with the sky above us and the cloud stretched out underneath in an infinite […]
If you can make time for reading just one professional report over the holidays, please make it Project Information Literacy’s (PIL’s) latest research report, “Lessons Learned: How College Students Find Information in the Digital Age” released on Tuesday, Dec. 1 (42 pages, PDF, 3 MB). (Note that I didn’t narrow “you” to those of us […]