It’s amazing how I manage to delude myself year after year. Every spring I make a list of projects I want to get done in the summer when I “have more time.” And every year, I barely get through any of them. This year I was really optimistic about what I could accomplish and I’m …
A week and a half ago, I was giving a talk in South Florida (where I used to live) and it’s made me a little reflective about how much my life has changed since then. Four and a half years ago, I was a Library Assistant I at the Boca Raton Public Library, working in …
Seriously, I just don’t get it. So, Google used to have a blog just for librarians called Librarian Central. I remember hearing about it from lots of folks way back when, but I didn’t read it because I figured if Google came out with something cool, I’d hear about it from someone’s blog. Apparently, the …
I’ve been thinking a lot about how we value online things in light of a few interesting posts I’ve read recently. The first was Walt Crawford’s post about some negative reactions people had to his charging money for the electronic version of his book. One critic wrote: But seriously, Walt, $29.50 for a paperback is …
There is a very small, select list of people who I really see as role models in this profession. One of them is Mary Chimato, Head of Access Services at North Carolina State University. Her generosity, her strength, her humility, her sense of humor, her unwillingness to be steamrolled by anyone, her focus on being …
Wordle is a fun little tool! You can put in your del.icio.us username or paste in some text and get a pretty neat-looking word cloud. Here’s my CV as a cloud: Here’s a list of the titles of my presentations over the past 2 1/2 years as a cloud:
Would you like your creative work to be immortalized on a major website in our profession? Here’s your chance! LISjobs.com LOGO CONTEST LISjobs.com is seeking submissions for a new logo that reflects its mission of job hunting and career development for librarians and info pros. This logo will be featured on the upcoming redesign of …
Oh Thursday I’ll be heading to ALA Annual. I wish I could muster up more excitement about going to Anaheim, but the location doesn’t exactly thrill me (nor does the amount of flying and driving it will take to get there). Then again, ALA isn’t really about the location so much as the people. And …
Belly rubbing Originally uploaded by librarianmer Adam on the dock Originally uploaded by librarianmer I have to say that this was one of the best vacations I’ve ever been on. Staying in a beautiful place, taking hikes, eating great food, meeting nice goats and eating their delicious cheese, becoming friends with one of the best …
Friends Lake Originally uploaded by ftzdomino Tomorrow morning, Adam and I are leaving for a vacation in the Adirondacks. This is the first time in AGES that our vacations haven’t either centered around a talk I’m giving or a trip to visit family. This is an honest-to-goodness no obligations, do-as-little-as-possible, email-and-feed-free vacation. And after the …
I am on a roll with this travel mojo! On Monday, I visited the Annual Conference of the Association of Christian Librarians in Quincy, MA to give a preconference entitled Building Academic Library 2.0. Like Puerto Rico, it ended up being a terrific experience. Everyone was so friendly and I was fortunate to have a …
I don’t write much on this blog about the gadgets and applications I use, but I’ve recently started using several things that I thought people might want to know about and try for themselves (if they don’t know about them already). I often assume that everyone already knows about the things I’ve discovered, but after …
Last week, I was in Puerto Rico, speaking all-day at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez (on the Western side of the island). I’ve gotten pretty tired of traveling over the past year, but this trip reminded me of what I loved about doing all this in the first place. The whole experience was …
One of my former students from SJSU had an interesting question for me about archiving student and faculty blogs: I am in the midst of reading Varsity Letters : Documenting Modern Colleges and Universities and I realized that a major hole in our archives is the documentation of the teaching and learning that is taking …
Note: 95% of this was written on a flight from San Juan to Philadelphia, so please excuse any spelling/grammatical errors or anything that just doesn’t make sense. I haven’t had time to really proofread this and I wanted to finish the challenge in a reasonable amount of time. Day 26: Exploring Other Ways to Comment …
I need to ask a favor of you, my kind and generous readers. I recently offered to redesign the website for the Brown Public Library in Northfield, VT, which is definitely due for an extreme makeover. Since one of the most important requirements is that it is easy for someone who knows no HTML to …
Day 19: Respond to a Commenter on Your Own Blog This activity is supposed to be about responding to people who comment on your posts. The person who created the activity writes “if readers have made time to comment on your posts, you should always make sure to respond back (ideally to each reader) in …
I’ve been reading and experiencing things lately that have really gotten me thinking about blogging, social media, and why people share so much of themselves online. If you’re looking for deep insights into this or some sort of logical argument, step away from the blog. My own thoughts are rather a jumble. I often ask …
Day 15: Give a Comment Award I’m supposed to recognize one or a few commenters on my blog today, and for whatever parameters I choose (they write good comments, they comment frequently, they make me think, etc.). I’m going to recognize a few commenters who really challenge me and make me think. Many of the …
Day 14: Turn Your Blog Over to Your Readers In this post, I’m supposed to turn my blog over to you by asking you to answer a question. This one is actually something I’ve been thinking about for a while and am curious to hear other people’s answers. I frequently get asked what courses I …