2010 – Information Wants To Be Free

On devil’s advocates and sausage-making

Karen Schneider published an interesting post yesterday under the pithy title The Devil Needs No Advocate. Other than the title, it's a post that I mostly agree with and it…

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Transliteracy from the perspective of an information literacy advocate

A colleague of mine and I have been talking about transliteracy for some time and came to very similar conclusions as David Rothman did in his smart and respectful critique.…

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What do they really need?

I'm not sure if I've become more cynical or just more observant, but lately I feel like I've been seeing things through new eyes. We make so many assumptions in…

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Inspiring stuff to read, Take 3

When I looked at the list of items I wanted to share with you and saw the number that were from one blog, I realized that I really should just…

instruction MPOW

Inventory of info lit instruction/assessment: Your feedback needed

I mentioned in my most recent post that our VPAA (Vice President of Academic Affairs) recently gave me the green light to form an information literacy committee chaired by myself…

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Management, upward mobility and sticking

I was really excited when I saw the title of In the Library With the Lead Pipe's post "Rising through the Ranks: On Upward Mobility in Librarianship" from last month.…

libraries

Netflix in libraries and hypocrisy

This afternoon, I read a post at the Wired Campus blog about libraries loaning out Netflix discs to students and faculty. They point to a guest post from a librarian…

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Inspiring stuff to read, Take 2

I was thinking about writing a post reflecting on recent posts about the myth of the graying of the profession (and the coming librarian shortage) and Peter Brantley's post about…

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What’s the deal, JSTOR?

I've written some posts in the past about vendors that have done some pretty slimy things in the name of making a profit. At least that makes sense to me.…

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Immersion reflections

Wow, what can I say about Immersion? First of all, you have to be there to really understand what a profound experience it is. My in-laws were visiting when I…

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Numbers vs. meaning

Forgive this less-than-well-thought-out post. I've been thinking a lot about assessment lately and the librarianly love of numbers in assessment, and I'm a troubled by the way that some academic…

libraries

History and change

I've been thinking a lot lately about finding a balance between honoring history and promoting change. Then I read a post by Kendra entitled "The tension between 'memory' and 'complacency'"…

ALA

It’s unconference time!

Last year, Michelle Boule and I organized what ended up being a FANTASTIC first Unconference at ALA Annual. I was so impressed with the quality of the talks and discussions,…

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Tips for library job applicants in a tight market

Another semester of teaching at San Jose State's SLIS program has ended. Many of my students are graduating and others are starting to think about applying for jobs so they'll…

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Follow my American Libraries columns online!

The folks at American Libraries have done a beautiful job with their Drupal-based website. It's a heck of a lot more polished than their old site and contains not only…