I just spent four hours keying misspelled terms into a search engine we’re evaluating to see how well it does. I may be rooned for lyfe. (Note: because vendors may be reading my blog, I’m not using any of the terms used in our evaluation.) I really shouldn’t be keyboarding during my lunch break–it would […]
The Library of Congress recently announced “that it will cease to provide controlled series access in the bibliographic records that its catalogers produce.” This has created quite a tizzy in some circles, with most of the tizzying on the order of: * But series work is important! * LC is supposed to provide it for […]
I gave myself a few days on this issue to let the flavors mellow. It’s Saturday morning, it’s been a good week at My Place Of Work, it’s been a good if challenging personal week (Lil’ Brown-nose co-presented on research methods to her MFA lit class, and they loved it) and I’m ready to tackle […]
I cannibalize the current quarterly report from the last quarterly report because, well, because I’m a lazy cuss and besides, it makes it easier to keep my story straight. But once in a while I read something I wrote in the pitched fever of report deadlines that uncurves my spine for a moment. In January, […]
A flyer being distributed not too far from here, prior to a library board meeting: “We are coming to take back the library from the outsiders and technocrats. They are a discredit to Berkeley’s radical history–the library should be a place to get get away from the invasion of technology. And the workers are tired […]
This started as a you-post-for-me comment at Meredith’s blog… but why not post it here and get the link juice? Back in 1992, I believe it was, Jean Armour Polly, one of the pioneers of the Internet in libraries (back when that was tantamount to suggesting beer in libraries), wrote (and I paraphrase, badly) that […]
Steven Cohen has a post on Library Stuff about regretting comments as of late. I posted a comment, but all I can say on FRL, sitting here in the wet darkness of a California winter that won’t stop, is that I’m glad the Steven I know is back: that funny, quirky, unafraid, observant, but basically […]
I’m headed off to the big city to research local newspapers from the mid-1980s–the kind of material that’s not online. I just wanted to be extra sure before my northern trek that the library was open and the materials were available, so I asked, “This isn’t the day that you’re cleaning the microfilm, is it?” […]
I ventured into my “opinions” section in Bloglines a couple of minutes ago on my lunch break while I nuked leftovers in the microwave, and found something else nuclear on Bayosphere, which I don’t read as often as I should: Steven Zenith’s reaction to the San Jose Public Library. He fulminates (often in upper case) […]
“Blended librarians” in the Bay Area–those of us lovin’ the books and the technology–should try to get to a talk by Bob Stein about books in a networked society 1 p.m. this Friday, March 17, at the Stanford Humanities Center. (The tasty runoff from Stanford’s intelligentsia is partial compensation for living in absurdly overpriced Palo […]