Yesterday, at my job interview, I was asked to talk about the 21st century library and what I would bring to it. I wish I had read this article by Robert S. Martin of IMLS (in College and Research Libraries News) before I went to the interview. While I did talk about libraries changing their …
I don’t have anything to say about the case that hasn’t been said before, but I am really saddened by the fact that this case, challenging the Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, has been dismissed. To me, this is a clear sign (among many) that our government has moved completely away from any consideration …
Rory Litwin has an excellent editorial in Library Juice this month. Undone by Flattery is about what librarians give up because we are so susceptible to flattery. After suffering daily with ungrateful and difficult patrons, we often feel like no one appreciates the service we offer to society. We love to hear people talk about …
This year, my husband and I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time and it was a rousing success. Here is a picture of the table before the guests arrived. And here’s me (or part of me) setting the table. My mother-in-law is quite the gourmet, and my father is quite picky, so any praise from …
I’m surprised I hadn’t heard more about this news before I found this encouraging CNET article via Librarian’s Happen. Apparently, Adobe is moving into open source software development and marketing. They won’t specify exactly what their plans are, but the fact that they are hiring a Director of Linux Market Development and a computer scientist …
Tame the Web this week has a great little guide on Teaching RSS to Reference Librarians. He’s got great links to other resources that will educate and inspire librarians to get excited about RSS. The Kansas City Public Library System and the Minneapolis Public Library are good examples of public libraries that have embraced RSS, …
I’m back from my wacky wild trip into our legal system. I’ll just say that I hope I’m never on the other side of the law, because it was nerve-wracking enough just being in the jury pool! And I don’t know if this is typical, but the courtroom was the coldest room I’ve been in. …
Michael McGrorty has an eloquent article about the homeless and public libraries in his blog today. This is a really tough subject in public libraries. As librarians, we really don’t want to restrict access to anyone, but at the same time, we also don’t want to discourage many people from coming to the library because …
There have been a number of recently published or written scholarly articles on blogging. Communications of the ACM has devoted most of their December 2004 anniversary issue to articles about The Blogosphere. I read the articles for free (one of the benefits of still being a University student) and didn’t really find anything in them …
Amateur journalists take note: according to Wired, the makers of Wikipedia have now created Wikinews, which allows anyone to write and edit news articles (subject to a similar review process to that of the Wikipedia, of course).
I’m probably grossly oversimplifying this, but I think there are two types of librarians: those who embrace technology and those who are antagonistic towards it or ignore it. I have seen this in my work at a public library and, surprisingly to me, at library school. I have been amazed that many people in my …
December 2004’s American Heritage magazine features America Unabridged: The Definitive Guide to the Greatest Books About Our Past. This annotated bibliography covers a wide variety of topics and all of the time periods in American History, with materials chosen by many well-known historians. It includes not only books, but movies, photographs, and other works of …
I couldn’t agree more with what Aaron Schmidt wrote about in his Ten Things to Stay Tech Current, but I think he should add a number eleven to his list: learn everything you can about open source and use OSS in your library. I really don’t understand why more libraries haven’t explored the world of …
Everyone working at or interested in libraries should read Top Ten Things to Stay Tech Current by Aaron Schmidt at Walking Paper.
This month’s LIScareer.com has an article about taking a paraprofessional job once you have your MLS. This is something I’ve certainly been thinking about now that I’m 2 weeks away from graduation and have seen what the job market looks like for an entry-level professional librarian. While Robert Newlen and Teri Switzer make good points …
A couple of months ago, I was impressed by how well TiVo was courting consumers by lowering their price and marketing to busy people rather than to couch potatoes. But my opinion has changed greatly now that TiVo is going to allow pop-up ads while users are fast-forwarding through commercials. This makes TiVo look like …
I recently read an interesting article for my Information Retrieval course about Power Laws and Weblogs, which I found very interesting in light of my recent forrays into blogging. The author states that blogs follow the same power laws that affect most social and economic systems. “A new social system starts, and seems delightfully free …
The Washington Post, in a series of focus groups, discovered that young people are far less likely to subscribe to newspapers than people 35 and over. Frankly, that wasn’t a great big surprise to me or most other people living on planet Earth. What was slightly more surprising is that many of them said they …
According to Wired, the GAO is going to investigate how the vote was counted and during the election, particularly in hotly contested states like Ohio and Florida. This comes on the heels of many discoveries across the country of machines that were “incorrectly programmed” to give the advantage to Bush, and other irregularities. This is …