I’m on my way to the Texas Library Association annual conference, where I will square off in the ring with the likes of Stephen Abram, Roy Tennant, and Joe Janes for a “Great Debate.” Good luck guys, I plan to mop the floor with you! So as I mosey westward, here are some links for […]
This is about two women, a blog, and a statewide mentoring program. I recently had to write a midway review for my participation in the 2007-2008 Sunshine State Library Leadership Institute — also known as the “mentoring program.” Mentors are like favorite aunts. We can hone in on helping our mentees with a focus that […]
The Library of Congress posted a Webcast about their marvelous Flickr project. Also see their FAQ, which lists the technical details. Peter Murray (aka “Disruptive Technology Library Jester”) has a good roundup of OPAC replacements and wrappers from his excellent presentation at the NISO “Next Generation Discovery: New Tools, Aging Standards” conference last week. In […]
News sources report that Gloria Won, a health librarian at UC San Francisco, played a key role in alerting LibraryLand that POPLINE, a federally-funded health database, was blocking the word “abortion.” Won, noticing that her search results weren’t retrieving anything for “abortion” (an odd result in a database for “reproductive health”) had written POPLINE. The […]
For Computers in Libraries 2008 (common tag: CIL2008), where I’m the emcee for a two-session program, “From Woepac to Wowpac,” I’ve received several messages encouraging me to “start adding content to the SWIFT platform.” Like slides, blog posts, delicious tags… the stuff I generally post here. I took a look at SWIFT when it was […]
(Sorry, I just had to rhyme.) Library Journal has announced its annual Movers and Shakers, and it’s a very good batch. Unfortunately, LJ’s website is so kabobbled that you’re best off exploring M&S 2008 through Jessamyn’s short list or Connie Crosby’s longer list. I was the “second” on the nomination for Tim Spalding, so I’m […]
[update: Mr. Baker apologized — see comment below. That was very nice of him.] I was laughing in spite of myself through Nicholson Baker’s essay about Wikipedia (agreeing with him on many points, and yet irritated that such a biblio-retro could make me chuckle) when I read: Someone recently proposed a Wikimorgue—a bin of broken […]
One of the trips that didn’t make my schedule was a very sudden trip to Hartford to present at the Trendspotting III conference held Friday by the Connecticut Library Consortium. I left Thursday late afternoon and am flying back today (Saturday). It was an interesting gig; the WALDO consortium recently signed up Liblime, so the […]
First, whilst I was in Orlando amusing some of my favorite MMLs (Muckety-Muck Librarians) with my 12-megabyte PowerPoint slideshow, I received news that my essay The Outlaw Bride was accepted for publication! In my typical ultra-superstitious manner I’m not going to tell you where until I at least see a contract, but it’s a well-respected […]
I was an unrepentant smoker for many years. I considered it my business and nobody else’s until the day in 1988 when I walked outside a building at Hahn Airbase to light up, and an airman who had wandered outside for the same reason said, “Oh, cool. An officer who smokes!” Then lit up a […]