Library Shenanigans

Tue 2 Mar 2010, 1:25 pm

Library Shenanigans, a new blog by my friend, Jessy.

Comments? (None yet)

Jenica on identity

Wed 6 Jan 2010, 1:11 pm

Jenica Rogers’ post about online identity and the library profession is smart and spot-on.

Comments? 2

NUCmas Tree

Wed 16 Dec 2009, 11:01 pm

The National Union Catalog is green. Christmas trees are green. See where we are going with this?

Comments? 4

Clueless faculty and uppity librarians

Tue 24 Nov 2009, 12:05 pm

My reaction to two recent articles that show a disconnect between how academic librarians and faculty view the role of the library. With cartoons!

Comments? 9

Classics of Library Science Mad Libs

Fri 21 Aug 2009, 12:19 am

Pick a noun, any noun.

Comments? (None yet)

Interview: Derik Badman

Tue 5 May 2009, 9:45 am

An interview with librarian and comics artist/author Derik Badman.

Comments? One

The LSW zine: articles due May 31

Thu 30 Apr 2009, 2:01 pm

Get those articles and artwork in by the end of May, 2009.

Comments? 4

LSW Cod of Ethics merchandise now available

Mon 27 Apr 2009, 9:27 am

People like shirts. People like cod. I like to make people happy.

Comments? One

Making a statement

Fri 3 Apr 2009, 11:59 am

The Darien Statements on the Library and Librarians help remove the awful aftertaste of the Taiga “provocative statements.”

Comments? 7

Shovers and Makers is open for business

Mon 23 Mar 2009, 11:36 am

It’s time for the first annual Shovers and Makers awards, brought to you by the Library Society of the World.

Comments? One

Movers and Sharers

Wed 18 Mar 2009, 5:51 am

I’m proud to know a bunch of this year’s Movers and Shakers. I value their generosity, and I’m proud that our profession values generosity and openness, too.

Comments? 2

Gearing up for a tough 2009

Fri 2 Jan 2009, 12:44 pm

The bad economy means that 2009 will be a tough year for many libraries. Here is a bit of a pep talk.

Comments? (None yet)

Head Over Heels: Literal Video Version

Thu 16 Oct 2008, 9:13 pm

A music video set in a library that was sill to begin with gets even sillier when you replace the regular lyrics with an overly-literal description of what’s happening on the screen.

Comments? One

Postcards from Library Camp of the West

Sat 11 Oct 2008, 11:39 pm

Some impressions and memories from Library Camp of the West, 2008.

Comments? One

Hi-Fi Sci-Fi Library

Wed 27 Aug 2008, 12:33 am

Check out David Lee King and Michael Porter’s fun video, “Hi-Fi Sci-Fi Libraries.” Is it off-putting to have the same librarians’ faces (including mine) appearing time and again in photos and videos?

Comments? 6

LSW makes me happy

Mon 30 Jun 2008, 5:44 pm

It looks like LSW is having fun at ALA. Photographic evidence provided.

Comments? 6

Do it now

Wed 30 Apr 2008, 10:03 am

My entry on the “passion quilt” meme: do it now.

Comments? 3

What we are bringing back

Thu 24 Apr 2008, 11:23 am

Why it is OK to have fun at a conference, and thoughts about what we are really “bringing back” with us.

Comments? 3

LSW at CIL

Mon 7 Apr 2008, 9:45 pm

Some impressions of day one of Computers in Libraries 2008, including my presentation with Josh Neff and Rikhei Harris on the Library Society of the World.

Comments? 3

Libraries and True Fans

Tue 1 Apr 2008, 8:25 am

Tim Spalding wonders how libraries missed an interesting and important self-published book. I wonder how long we can afford to keep missing them, and what we can do to stop?

Comments? 5

An army of librarians

Wed 12 Mar 2008, 9:51 pm

Project Gutenberg wants to know: would you “ASK AN ARMY OF LIBRARIANS?”

Comments? (None yet)

Open Access and the reference librarian

Tue 4 Mar 2008, 6:56 am

I think the average librarian may be a fan of Open Access not because of its impact on the budget, but for its effect at the reference desk.

Comments? 7

Tech-nos

Sun 17 Feb 2008, 11:09 pm

Jumping in on a little memlet: just how technologically ignorant are you? And why is that important?

Comments? 6

Hello Ranganathan

Thu 7 Feb 2008, 9:57 am

A WordPress plugin for the library geek.

Comments? 3

Staying out of the way

Thu 10 Jan 2008, 5:43 pm

Sometimes it is the library, not the librarian, that is inspiring.

Comments? 6

Delightfully edgy

Tue 13 Nov 2007, 11:38 pm

My friend and colleague, Jessy Randall, has published a “delightfully edgy” book of poetry, titled A Day in Boyland.

Comments? 6

Three big things

Wed 7 Nov 2007, 2:39 pm

Aaron Schmidt asks (some other people) “What are the most important things on which libraries should be working?” and I chime in.

Comments? 3

Best MLS experience ever!

Fri 2 Nov 2007, 1:40 pm

Win the best MLS experience ever! From a cracker box!

Comments? One

The computer is more afraid of you than you are of it

Tue 16 Oct 2007, 2:12 pm

The joy of learning to use a computer before computers could do anything interesting, and when it was no big deal to mess things up.

Comments? 7

How 1983 wasn’t like “1983”

Tue 25 Sep 2007, 10:27 pm

A look at C. A. Cutter’s 1883 futuristic essay, “The Buffalo Public Library in 1983,” available on Google Books.

Comments? 9

A study of scanning habits

Wed 15 Aug 2007, 11:32 pm

Books, I believe, aren’t just “containers” for “texts,” but something more problematic. I look at Paul Duguid’s article on Tristram Shandy and Google Books, and quote Dorothea Salo for good measure.

Comments? 18

A few thoughts on “University Publishing in a Digital Age”

Thu 9 Aug 2007, 9:12 am

Some of my notes on the recent report from Ithaka on the future of the university press.

Comments? 2

Writing and talking about librarian 2.0

Fri 3 Aug 2007, 3:38 pm

So you probably don’t need me to tell you this, but David Lee King wrote a post Wednesday called Am I a 2.0 Librarian and the Library 2.0 Spectrum. It featured an image that he titled Library 2.0 Spectrum. Some people really liked what David had to say and how he illustrated it with the [...]

Comments? 11

Visiting the Denver Zine Library

Tue 31 Jul 2007, 10:33 pm

I visited the excellent Denver Zine Library with my colleagues Lisa and Jessy.

Comments? (None yet)

Another pointless response to Gorman

Tue 12 Jun 2007, 10:09 pm

When I logged in to the Library Society of the World room today, people were talking about Michael Gorman’s blog posts.

I thought I had logged into an alternate dimension by mistake.

But no, wonder of wonders, Michael “Revenge of the Blog People” Gorman is blogging: Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason, Part I and part [...]

Comments? (None yet)

Walt Crawford

Mon 21 May 2007, 1:32 pm

Walt asks “Ever thought you or one of the groups you work for or with could use a Walt Crawford?”

It seems that due to the OCLC/RLG merger, Walt won’t have a job anymore come October. He runs down the details in his blog post, What’s next?

I’m not sure what more to say, except to wish [...]

Comments? 3

I love my co-workers

Wed 16 May 2007, 7:03 pm

The Tutt Library Precision Book Truck Drill Team shakes up the campus.

Comments? 3

Phew

Mon 7 May 2007, 4:35 pm

So according to the Pew Internets Quiz, I’m a “Connector.” Whatever. Walt Crawford is a “Lackluster Veteran,” and the more I think about that, the funnier it gets. Give me one word to describe Walt, and I would chose “lustrous.” True. (Though I guess it is Michael Porter showing the most “lust” in this photo. [...]

Comments? 11

lolbrarians

Fri 4 May 2007, 12:22 pm

Pharoahbrarian
Originally uploaded by Hatchibombotar.

If you have a low tolerance for silliness (or four letter words used in the service of silliness), you might as well stop here.

As you may have seen on librarian.net, there is a LiveJournal group called lolbrarians. There you will find photos of librarians with silly [...]

Comments? One

Unsung heroes and heroines

Sat 17 Feb 2007, 11:22 pm

Kind words for librarians from the editor of The Letters of Matthew Arnold.

Comments? One

I’m fluent in JavaScript as well as Klingon

Mon 18 Sep 2006, 12:31 pm

If you are reading this blog, you are–statistically speaking, anyway–also white and nerdy. So watch Weird Al’s latest and think “mon semblabe, mon frère!”

Here’s how I know I fit the bill: I understood all the D&D and Star Trek/Wars references, but I have no idea what the original song is that Al is parodying. (Though [...]

Comments? 2

Helping students. It’s what we do.

Fri 25 Aug 2006, 12:09 pm

I just got back from a quick talk to upper-class students who are leading New Student Orientation trips. They will be in charge of small groups of first-year students, taking them either out into the Southwest to do community service, or on camping trips in the Rockies. It is the kind of thing that would [...]

Comments? (None yet)

Bessemer Historical Society archives

Wed 16 Aug 2006, 2:13 pm

View from the cupola

Vampire in the vault

At MPOW, we took our annual retreat yesterday. Instead of team-buliding or brainstorming or the like, we went to the Bessemer Historical Society, the site of the archives for the old Colorado Fuel and Iron (or CF&I) company, [...]

Comments? (None yet)

Solvitur Ambulando

Sun 30 Jul 2006, 10:13 am

I see from a pair of links in the post Why it matters from Dorothea Salo at Caveat Lector that Bess Sadler is blogging at Solvitur Ambulando*

Bess is my wife’s cousin, and while I can’t claim to know her very well, I can say that I’m excited at the prospect of her blogging. She’s a [...]

Comments? 5

You are ALA – The American Library Association’s newest contact!

Mon 24 Jul 2006, 11:57 am

This is new to me: ALA is on Flickr. We got this in our library email box today:

Hi Colorado College Tutt Library,

You are ALA – The American Library Association’s newest
contact! If you don’t know ALA – The American Library
Association, ALA – The [...]

Comments? 2

Women and technology and libraries and blogs

Mon 3 Jul 2006, 11:10 am

K.G. Schneider asks 2.0: Where are the women? and Dorothea Salo and Karen Coombs chimed in.

As your average white guy, I don’t have a good answer, and some of the answers that I have come up with sound like excuses, so I won’t offer them here. I’ll just say that yes, I’d like to hear [...]

Comments? 6

A Library 2.0 skeptic’s reading list

Fri 26 May 2006, 8:34 pm

Walt Crawford recently offered an “apology” of sorts on his blog Walt at Random for being the only person that the Library 2.0 proponents tend to cite as a Library 2.0 critic or skeptic. His January 2006 survey of the state of “Library 2.0 and ‘Library 2.0′” (link to pdf or html; it’s long, so [...]

Comments? 5

Radical trust within the library

Mon 22 May 2006, 12:29 pm

Library 2.0 formula

There has been a fair amount of talk about “radical trust” in the biblioblogosphere lately. If you need to catch up, the starting point seems to be Darlene Fichter’s Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and Radical Trust: A First Take, followed by those who link to that post.

Much [...]

Comments? (None yet)

A library role model: Leland Park

Wed 17 May 2006, 11:25 am

My library director, Carol, emailed us all a link to this wonderful Chronicle of Higher Education profile of Davidson College’s library director, Leland M. Park. He is retiring from the college after 31 years as director (and more years than that with the college from which he graduated in 1963). By all accounts Park is [...]

Comments? (None yet)

Michael McGrorty on "Technology, Books and the Librarian"

Sun 14 May 2006, 2:36 pm

Michael McGrorty has posted a longish essay to his blog, Library Dust entitled Technology, Books and the Librarian.

The essay is a consideration of the place of the library and the librarian as we look toward the future. I won’t summarize the whole thing; you should read it yourself in full. But let’s just say that [...]

Comments? (None yet)

Barbaric yawp

Fri 12 May 2006, 12:17 pm

No doubt you have seen Pope Michael Gorman’s latest pronouncement. The one about yipping and yawping “millenniarist librarians” (whatever that means) and “pseudo-librarians” who offend the Great Leader so much with our blogs and computing devices and rock and roll music (or something). You can read the entire column on Gorman’s (ahem) website–I guess it [...]

Comments? 2

I love the self-promoting over-prolific alpha librarians

Thu 20 Apr 2006, 2:20 pm

If you have been reading library blogs this week, you have seen the discussion on “shameless self-promotion” and the like. Meredith Farkas’ Shameless self-promoter at Information Wants to Be Free is the latest one I have seen, and she recaps the previous posts, so you can start there and work backward if you have missed [...]

Comments? 3

Is the Medium the Message for Library Blogs?

Fri 31 Mar 2006, 3:26 pm

[Note: the post below started out as a comment on Library Juice, but I decided to move it over here as it got a bit too long and wide-ranging for a comment. Besides, I have been doing a lot more commenting than blogging lately (to the point of being a virtual squatter in one thread [...]

Comments? 3

Carnival of the Infosciences Number Twenty-Nine

Mon 20 Mar 2006, 2:55 pm

OK! Step right up for the Carnival of the Infosciences number twenty-nine! Keep you hands, feet, and laptops inside the ride at all times, and don’t get cotton candy on the keyboard. And absolutely no refunds!

I’m very happy to be hosting the Carnival for the first time. I had a bit of a week last [...]

Comments? 3

Submit to Carnival of the Infosciences!

Mon 13 Mar 2006, 3:16 pm

Centripetal Remix

Originally uploaded by MindSpigot.

The Carnival of the Infosciences will be here at See Also one week for today (on Monday, March 20)! For those of you who know what that means, don’t let me down. Submit your stuff early and often to slawson@coloradocollege.edu or [...]

Comments? One

Congratulations, Sarah!

Thu 2 Mar 2006, 9:20 pm

Congratulations to Sarah “Librarian in Black” Houghton on her new job at the San Mateo County Library.

Sarah is the first library blogger I met “in real life” as my son Luke would say, back at Internet Librarian 2005. She is a great blogger and a neat person, and this job sounds like it will be [...]

Comments? One

The Great Queue of China

Wed 22 Feb 2006, 11:07 pm

Like many bloggers, I have a text file full of half-finished (half-assed?) blog posts which are, as Dan Traister says about his in-process papers, “in various stages of drafty undress.”

Recently I read Andrea Mercado, of Library Techtonics fame, calling her backlog “The Long Queue.” I like that, and will henceforth call my backlog The Long [...]

Comments? One

Meme 2.0

Wed 22 Feb 2006, 10:43 pm

I was in the virtual peanut gallery at this morning’s SirsiDynix Institute Conversation: “The 2.0 Meme – Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Librarian 2.0.” The panel was the Library 2.0 Gang of Four, i.e., Stephen Abram, John Blyberg, Michael Casey, and Michael Stephens.

All four men were in good form, sounding the themes that are familiar if [...]

Comments? (None yet)

Librarians and IM survey

Mon 20 Feb 2006, 9:52 pm

In case you haven’t seen this yet, Michael Stephens of Tame the Web is doing a survey on librarians and instant messaging. It takes five minutes, maybe less, and you should take the survey regardless of whether you or your library uses IM.

In the illustration (from my buddy list) we see that Mr. Stephens is [...]

Comments? 2

Michael Stephens to Tame Academe

Tue 14 Feb 2006, 3:38 pm

This card has now become very collectible, as Michael has been traded to Dominican University’s GSLIS

I say Michael will “Tame Academe” as a play on his blog’s title, Tame the Web, but if anything, he will be shaking it up. Michael announced today in his post, Reinvention, that he will be leaving his job at [...]

Comments? (None yet)

A million mice typing (with headphones!)

Wed 8 Feb 2006, 10:29 pm

Best Word Book Ever – When you Grow Up #2

Originally uploaded by kokogiak.

Merlin Mann (my own personal guru of the funny-alpha-geek persuasion) of 43 Folders has a nice podcast up titled The Richard Scarry Book of the Future.

He talks about vocational training in his public [...]

Comments? (None yet)

NextGen Librarian wanted

Thu 19 Jan 2006, 1:25 pm

Dave’s Blog links to an interesting job ad from Wayne State University: Next Generation Librarian

This looks like a job with a lot of cool, fun responsibilities. One would hope that the institution is ready to implement what this person is likely to recommend. Given what Jeff Trzeciak, Associate Dean at Wayne State University, says in [...]

Comments? 3

A Library 2.0 hangover

Tue 10 Jan 2006, 1:58 pm

Alternate titles for this post:

There is no such thing as Library 2.0 and this is a blog post about it. (Apologies for bastardizing the first line of Steven Shapin’s book The Scientific Revolution.)
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? And are pin-dancing angels really Library 2.0?

I have spent the last week [...]

Comments? 9

Pay to play at ALA?

Wed 21 Dec 2005, 1:03 pm

If you read enough library blogs to be aware of See Also, then you have probably seen the recent flurry of activity around Jenny Levine’s recent posts Why I’m Not Joining ALA Right Now After All and her follow-up Continuing Conference Conversations. The main thrust of her post is that it is absurd that she [...]

Comments? One

Librarian code skillz

Fri 16 Dec 2005, 10:41 pm

Do librarians need to be programmers? As the Simpsons’ Reverend Lovejoy says, “short answer, no with an if; long answer, yes with a but.”

This memelet – librarians as coders – has been going around for the past few months. I first saw it when librarian.net linked to Dan Chudnov’s post A new era of web [...]

Comments? 2

The geekiest thing I have done lately…

Sun 20 Nov 2005, 7:08 pm

My trading card

…is put together my own librarian trading card at flagrantdisregard’s Flickr Toys and post it to the Librarian Trading Cards pool on Flickr.

I first spotted this meme de jour at Library Stuff, and the next thing I knew, a mephistophelean Michael Stephens was staring at me on [...]

Comments? (None yet)

Keep up, Libraryman style

Tue 15 Nov 2005, 4:05 pm

Keep Up! Workshop Packet

Originally uploaded by libraryman.

Well, I had just been blabbing about how I’d like to do a “keeping up” session for librarians at next year’s Colorado Association of Libraries conference, and now Libraryman has pre-emptively kicked my ass. You can’t get all the [...]

Comments? One

CAL2005: Googleization: A Discussion

Fri 11 Nov 2005, 8:34 pm

George Jaramillo and David Domenico, of Colorado State University, showed a short, speculative film about a future Amazon/Google Goliath called “Googlezon” as a catalyst for audience discussion afterward. The discussion was pretty wide-ranging and interesting, with many in the audience quite concerned about authority and accuracy in the world of networked information.

I met two other [...]

Comments? 2

Is Michael Gorman’s term up yet?

Mon 7 Nov 2005, 10:56 pm

Just as I was beginning to forget about ALA President Michael Gorman, he shows up in my aggravator, er, aggregator again. First with the quotes in the Wall Street Journal article (see also the commentary on ACRLog and CopyCense [via librarian.net]), and now with his address to the CLA as covered by Librarian in Black [...]

Comments? (None yet)

The Successful Academic Librarian

Mon 3 Oct 2005, 3:13 pm

A little blurb for The Successful Academic Librarian: Winning Stratgeies from Library Leadersedited and with contributions by friends of mine.

Comments? (None yet)

Status of academic librarians

Thu 29 Sep 2005, 11:10 am

Links to post on Random Access Mazar and Caveat Lector about librarians status in relation to faculty, plus my own take on the matter.

Comments? (None yet)