[update: in a comment, cj, below, provides a link to the original survey instrument which also provides answers to some of my questions.] Pew just issued a report, Information Searches That Solve Problems,” that even on its debut over a holiday weekend has already been quoted left and right as proof that the Internet is […]
I realize that in writing about RDA and cataloging on Christmas Eve I’m tagging myself as someone who clearly needs an intervention (if I can use the word “tagging” without making Michael Gorman screw through the ceiling). So let me quibble by saying that I’m really just updating my earlier post by including several links […]
As noted earlier, individuals and organizations have been scrambling to respond to the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, which William “FRBR Dude” Denton facetiously but usefully contracted to WoGroFuBiCo (see this group in delicious). “Scrambling” is a key term here, because the 16-day response period was extremely short, in […]
Update (12/16/07): The Big O has weighed in. This delicious set is useful. The bubble-up keyword WoGroFuBiCo (thanks, William Denton!) can be found in the wild. Update (12/14/07): See comments from Peter Murray (aka Disruptive Library Technology Jester), Rob Styles of Talis, and the Open Knowledge Foundation, which also had a separate list of input […]
Once again LibraryThing has done something fresh and marvelous. This time it’s SantaThing. “You play Santa to a random LibraryThing member, and buy them up $20 worth of books, based on their library or a short description. Someone else does the same to you. LibraryThing orders the books and pays the shipping, so no addresses […]
Our tankless water heater quietly gave up the ghost sometime between my shower yesterday afternoon and 7 a.m. today. While waiting for the plumber to call back (which happened only five minutes later, a very good sign; even better, he didn’t express surprise that our water heater was tankless, and simply asked “What model?”), I […]
My essay “Chow” is in the fall issue of Gastronomica, pictured here. Gastronomica‘s website doesn’t show it yet, but I’m bursting with pride so here you are. Yes, that is Freud holding a weenie. Sometimes a Hebrew National is just a Hebrew National. That makes three essays this year: “David, Just as he was,” in […]
(And if you’ve never heard that term…) The Big O‘s long-awaited report on “sharing, privacy and trust” begins by pointing out that lots of people use the Web, and adds (the far more interesting point) that people increasingly build the Web. “We have moved from an Internet built by a few thousand authors to one […]
Invariably, when I write about libraries dropping subscriptions to print literary magazines, at least one person says, “but there are other costs associated with serials management!” Yes, I do know that; I’ve lived it as a practitioner/pinch-hitting copy cataloger/administrator/geek-type/budget maven in a variety of libraries. A few quick responses to the usual comments: 1. Let’s […]
In the past six months I’ve left a job because it wasn’t a good fit and stopped writing for a publication to pursue other interests. Yet after reading Walt Crawford’s post about honesty, I feel it oddly necessary to say, no, really: in my case, in this situation, that’s just how things went down. He […]