open access

Mobile Learning: The Teacher in Your Pocket

Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013

There’s a great new book out on mobile technologies in libraries and I was fortunate to have been asked to contribute a chapter on mobile learning and mobile instruction in libraries. The book is called The Handheld Library: Mobile Technology and the Librarian and it was edited by the undeniably awesome Tom Peters and Lori [...]

Living our values

Thursday, September 13th, 2012

I have wanted to write about so many things that have come across my desktop lately, but work and getting ready for a major trip to New Zealand with my husband and a three year old have kept me from getting my thoughts out of my brain and onto the blog. Today was my last [...]

Faculty inertia and change in scholarly publishing

Monday, August 1st, 2011

I loved Barbara Fister’s recent post, “Breaking News: Academic Journals are Really Expensive!”, about faculty who seem surprised that journals cost the library a lot. Kind of amazing to think that these are people who produce and review content for these journals. And the quote from Peter Murray-Rust’s blog stating that “[librarians] should have altered [...]

A lot of Davids make one heck of a Goliath

Monday, April 5th, 2010

In response to my post a few days ago about EBSCO, Sarah Houghton-Jan just wrote an impassioned post about unethical vendor practices, suggesting that we let our vendors know when we are not happy with what they’re doing. While I do agree that libraries should make their dissatisfaction with specific vendors or vendor practices known [...]

Giving and Taking

Thursday, June 28th, 2007

Oh Meredith, why can’t you just write a nice, short, concise post? I really don’t know what happens! I start writing and my fingers just seem to take over. This is what happens when my husband goes away and leaves me alone with my thoughts. Sorry folks! Something I frequently think about when I go [...]

IL2006 Day 2: Institutional Repository Basics: From Soup to Nuts

Wednesday, October 25th, 2006

Roy Tennant, University of California While I was very interested in all of the talks in the social computing track today, I really wanted to expand my knowledge of certain topics that I know very little about. I knew that Roy would be likely to give a very practical nuts-and-bolts introduction to developing institutional repositories [...]

On skill sharing

Wednesday, April 26th, 2006

Last November, I went to a meeting of Vermont colleges where we discussed doing more consortial activities. We broke up into groups to discuss different ideas and then reported to everyone at the meeting. One of the things we discussed in our group was the idea of skill-sharing. It is often the case in smaller [...]

Elf and Privacy Issues

Wednesday, December 28th, 2005

Mary Minnow has written several posts on Library Elf and potential privacy issues. Since my library uses Voyager, I haven’t tried Library Elf out yet, but it’s supposed to create an RSS feed for you to keep track of what you have out, what’s coming due, and where you are on your holds. You can [...]

The Max Power way

Tuesday, January 18th, 2005

According to Techdirt, a California state senator has introduced a bill that threatens developers of file sharing applications with jail time. John Borland at CNET, writes, “if passed and signed into law, it could expose file-swapping software developers to fines of up to $2,500 per charge, or a year in jail, if they don’t take [...]

A new corporate approach to intellectual property

Thursday, January 13th, 2005

IBM is making 500 of its patents available for free to people doing open source projects. Rock on! From the New York Times: I.B.M. executives say the company’s new approach to intellectual property represents more than a rethinking of where the company’s self-interest lies. In recent speeches, for example, Samuel J. Palmisano, I.B.M.’s chief executive, [...]