One of my favorite library stories comes from the days when small public libraries in upstate New York were being encouraged to go online. A consultant went to visit a small library–one of those Barbie Dream libraries that are hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and staffed so minimally that the library worker [...]
I have this long post drafted about Maslow’s hierarchy and priorities and this and that. I guess it’s ok. But tonight I sat in a circle with students, faculty, and other friends and supporters of Peanut U, and first we celebrated the artistic achievements of a student graduating this spring, whose art now graces the [...]
Last week I was asked to submit a written draft of our library’s Vision, like, pronto. This scared me to death, because I’ve done a lot of presenting and talking and so on, but I don’t have a Vision. (I have progressive lenses–quite reasonable at CostCo–but that’s not quite the same thing.) But my boss [...]
I spent almost two weeks struggling with the Monster Cold that attacked My Place of Work, and really could only take one day off. This wasn’t about heroics; it was simply that there were too many important, entertwined events that my absence would have affected. And you know, that is not such a bad thing. [...]
We just dropped the rent! The Craigslist listing says $1200 but we agreed to $1150. (As I had suggested all along… but I digress.) We are renting out the home we own in Tallahassee. It’s a 3-bedroom, 2-bath midcentury house with a sunroom and loads of lawn around it, making it very private. There’s a [...]
I’m in a motel in Oxnard, resting up before a funeral tomorrow. My uncle Bob died. I didn’t know him well — our family has a lot of gaps in its attachments — but he led a good strong life and died with his boots on, felled by a series of strokes that began hours [...]
Tomorrow I’m keynoting virtually for the Edgy Librarian conference. I have come back from ALA with my head full of interesting things–augmented reality, mobility, the cloud, and web-scale library management will be high on my list–but what I’m trying to do now is… 1. cluster these thoughts into actual trends (a neat new tool is [...]
Top Technology Trends was very well done (I had the sense someone had actually tested the technologies in advance, or at least evaluated previous sessions) and featured a suite of smart, articulate, forward-looking librarians. Recurrent themes among their trends included localization, mobile apps, user experience, augmented reality, and more. Had a sit-down with OCLC folks [...]
Today we took residence of our really-good-deal San Francisco rental. This places me back in my home town for the first time since August, 1979, when I took off for New York City to begin my junior year in college, following two years in which I saved up money by working as a records clerk [...]
(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 [...]
