Note: that title is a compliment. Code4Lib is a big stretch for me. Large swaths of it are simply too technical for me. (Note the important qualifier: for me.) Even the way Code4Libbers welcome one another in advance was harder than usual. List my name on a wiki? No, nothing that simple. I had to […]
Even those of us who worry about the image of librarians can’t get upset about J. Crew’s “library shawl cardigan,” with its sexy-smart thing workin’ for it. Although — full disclosure — in the real world, my library sweaters have typically been ratty, lint-flecked monstrosities designed to be furtively donned in the privacy of an […]
Sunday, February 22, I leave for Code4Lib, and will be in Providence til midday Friday. I keynoted in 2007, didn’t get there in 2008, and am back as a free-floating attendee (one of the developers is attending, so that we’ll have someone there who actually understands what’s being presented), though I am taking my video […]
The trip out west to attend ER&L 2009 at UCLA, with some vacay tacked on, was just glorious. I took many notes and even got vigorous and drafted several essays, including one that has been percolating in my head for a year, and took some pictures as well. Before it all gets away from me: […]
First Homebrew! Originally uploaded by freerangelibrarian Cracked open my first bottle Friday (two weeks after bottling my first batch, 3 in a Bed Bitters from HomeBrew Den)… carefully tasted… yum, it’s delicious! Milder and less fizzy than I expected, but very good, and very fresh-tasting. It’s like homemade ice cream and sorbet: there is no […]
The latest issue of Ninth Letter — a physically-gorgeous journal from the University of Illinois — includes my essay, “The Outlaw Bride,” about my marriage to my partner Sandy in 2004 and its aftermath after our marriage was invalidated by the state. It’s an essay about the meaning of marriage, and love, and stuff even […]
I’m tooling around California, having a blissfully good time, but just saw that Project Information Literacy out of U Washington had just announced it had issued a mid-project report, based on its 2008 fall student discussion groups held on seven U.S. campuses with 86 college students. This report is really required reading not just for […]
All kinds of magical things are happening these days. A plane crashes except everyone is safe and then it turns out the hero-pilot is a library user, and the library waives his fees (smart move there, library) and buys a new book in his honor, and it’s all celebrated on the national news, which means […]
My killer-app moment was with Summon, a new unified-search service from Serial Solutions that does what we really want a product like this to do: natively indexes data from its sources (databases, ebooks, OPACs, etc.) so that retrieval is fast and consistent. Summon makes your typical metasearch tool look like a rusty wagon with square […]