Obligatory Google Wave Post

In the middle of last week, I got my coveted Google Wave invite. Ever since it had been announced, I had been excited for the September 30th open preview invite. While I didn’t get invited on the first round of invites, my proverbial Golden Ticket came a week after. I had just gotten in [...]

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Thursday Night Deep Thought

If tomorrow they invented a way to beam information into your brain (a la The Matrix), would there be a subset of librarians who would object to it on the grounds that it usurps the activity of reading?
I think so.

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The Library Deconstructed

In ruminating on a post on Librarian By Day, I was sitting in the back of the Children’s section of the county library surrounded by rows and rows of books. The hum of the highway behind me is constant on this busy county road as is the sounds of kids and parents navigating the [...]

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File Under Miscellaneous, Part 1

About two years ago, I was hired as a part time librarian for the library where I now work full time. Recently I’ve been thinking about how some new librarians have taken stock of their experience of the first couple of years in their blogs. They talk about how they have changed professionally, where they [...]

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The String Theory of Reference Interviews

Quite frankly, most of the reference desk interactions I have with patrons are pretty rote: material requests, program registration, basic library policy questions, and assistance with whatever piece of technology that is currently misbehaving. But it is the minority of questions and requests that keep my librarian heart warm, for they invoke the exchange known [...]

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Wednesday Night Open Question

I was browsing The Flavor Bible this evening when I found something that got me thinking. When they polled more than thirty of America’s leading chefs about the ten ingredients they would take to a desert island for the rest of their lives, the number one ingredient was salt. It is nature’s flavor enhancer and [...]

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To the Moon & Beyond

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we [...]

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Fight the Power 2.0

It was earlier this year when I realized that the song in the video above, “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy, was twenty years old. I remember when I was first introduced to Public Enemy back in high school. My friend Adam put on the album “Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes [...]

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Dead Wildebeests and the Self Conscious Crocodile: Pres4Lib 2009

On Friday, I went to the Pres4Lib conference organized by the bloggers of Library Garden. It was a conference for presenters and trainers and focused on ways to improve presentation skills and use of media aids. I generally don’t do a lot of presentations in a month, but I do run programs and classes so [...]

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Advocacy. Tasty tasty social media based library advocacy.

Advocacy through social media has just gotten a bit cooler.
There is a newly formed Facebook group for a Library Themed Ben & Jerry’s Flavor. But what do libraries and Ben & Jerry’s have to do with each other?
In these economic conditions, the role of the library is becoming more important in the lives of its [...]

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