So says a professor of English at Princeton, and who am I to argue with him? I love this editorial in part because the author doesn’t devolve into oversimplified anachronisms (where we’re busy stamping books) or turn us into low-cleavage sexpots wearing the kind of spike heels no one in their right mind would wear […]
Lipstick Librarian gets it right; librarians can be so forest for the trees! Correcting someone in a private email discussion is the equivalent of someone who leans over to pick a piece of lint off your clothing while you’re talking; it’s snotty passive-aggressive behavior, right up there with Jonathan Franzen complaining about being selected by […]
Mark Rosensweig and I are on ALA Council together. Once in a while our planets align on an issue. I won’t say that I agree with Mark word for word on Google Print, but he has articulated some concerns percolating in the back of my head. (See also a brief note from Anil Dash.) The […]
1. First, do your best to puncture our stuffy “scholarly” image and show show everyone that librarians are as groovy as everyone else. Dumb down your spelling, grammar, and punctuation, haul out as many formulaic expressions as you know of, and use lots of exclamation points and question marks in a sentence. Y Nott???? Sweeeeeeeeeeeet!!!!!! […]
“It’s only a blog.” “I’m not a reporter!” “This is just commentary.” “Everyone knows it’s just my opinion.” Sound familiar? To quote one of my favorite cartoons, “I say it’s spinach, and I say to hell with it.” Once you put words into print for all to read, and particularly once you implicate other people’s […]
See: http://blogethics2004.blogspot.com Which links to these two great resources: Rebecca Blood’s Weblog Ethics: http://www.rebeccablood.net/handbook/excerpts/weblog_ethics.html Cyberjournalist.net, A Blogger’s Code of Ethics: http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/000215.php For some time I’ve grumbled and groused about the practices of librarian bloggers. Too many of us want to be considered serious citizen-journalists, when it suits us, but fall back on “hey, it’s only […]
Full text at http://tinyurl.com/5ambu (registration required) Gnatek, Tim. Libraries Reach Out, Online. New York Times, December 9, 2004: “E-books are only one way that libraries are laying claim to a massive online public as their newest service audience. The institutions are breaking free from the limitations of physical location by making many kinds of materials […]
You must share this delightful article far and wide: “A Billion-Dollar IPO for Johns Hopkins,” by William R. Brody, President of Johns Hopkins Univ. It’s tongue in cheek, but very, very flattering to us. Not bad for a week in which we also starred on TV. http://www.jhu.edu/gazette/2004/06dec04/06brody.html “Our library has the most effective search engines […]
I taped, but did not watch “The Librarian” on TNT last night because I had so much homework (o.k., maybe I took a teensy peek at Geoffrey Rush playing Peter Sellers on HBO). Two blogs have already posted reviews. My own point of view tends to be “there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” but […]
I’ve been doing some research about Anne Lipow, and part of my research has taken me into the stacks at UC Berkeley, reading through decades of weekly newsletters. So occupied, I found an example of an entry in the Serials Keyword Index–a crude keyword index to journals printed on microfiche produced from the primitive, glacially […]