Art and books have been two big passions in my life, but I was not able to combine them professionally until after I was into my seventh decade. I enjoyed the 40-plus years I spent working in an academic library, but before I knew it, I was 68 and past due for retirement in 2004. … Continue reading Working Part-Time After Retirement
“Librarians of the future will be knowledge navigators. They will understand digital resources as well as printed books and other formats. Their services will not be restricted by physical location, either of the materials or of themselves.” That was what Deanna B. Marcum, then on the cusp of creating the Council on Library and Information … Continue reading What’s New in LIS Schools
How important? “In the last 30 years, nearly all net new jobs were created by start-ups, and they will continue to play a critical role in America’s economic future,” noted the US Department of Commerce’s chief economist Mark Doms in a March 23, 2011, post to Commerce’s Economics and Statistics Administration blog about business startups. … Continue reading How Public Libraries Are a Boon to Small Business
It’s no surprise: As a profession, we are facing a rapidly developing issue of growing significance, and that is e-content. It comes down to this: Libraries often cannot offer the types and amounts of e-content our users want and need. A lot of material is simply unavailable for us to access and circulate in electronic … Continue reading Essential Bookmarks
We all know about life imitating art, but what about novels imitating film—film noir in particular? Patrick Conrad’s No Sale (the words written in lipstick on a mirror by Gloria Wandrous, the Elizabeth Taylor character in Butterfield 8) is only the latest in a short list of noir fiction that draws on film noir. I’m … Continue reading An Homage to Film Noir
Meet Michael. In June, he graduated from a high school where he was encouraged to use his own technology for teaching and learning, and to connect to the district’s Wi-Fi network, where he shared almost complete open internet access on school- and personal-learning devices while on campus. The district’s guidelines for appropriate conduct are delineated … Continue reading A Tale of Two Students
It’s a question every used car buyer has to answer: “Is it the years or the miles?” Am I better off buying that vintage Pontiac LeMans with the really cool styling or that stodgy-looking two-year-old Honda? Looks can be deceiving. The vintage Pontiac was driven by a little old lady from Pasadena who used it … Continue reading Your Mileage May Vary
Most libraries in the US are small. For public libraries, this means that the population served is under 25,000 people. Similarly, two-thirds of academic libraries serve institutions with fewer than 3,000 students. When it comes to school libraries and many special libraries, staff numbers are typically small as well. What this means, practically speaking, is … Continue reading Practical Matters: Prepare, Protect, and Market Your Library
It’s amazing how quickly things change in the world of technology. When I wrote a book in 2005, I printed out all my research sources so I could highlight and take notes on them. I kept track of things I found on the web using a social bookmarking tool that only helped me find the … Continue reading Tools for Optimal Flow
Anne Enright, author of The Forgotten Waltz, and Robert K. Massie, author of Catherine the Great, were the first winners of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction respectively. The winners were announced at ALA’s Annual Conference in Anaheim, California, on June 24. Booklist Editors Donna Seaman and Brad Hooper … Continue reading First Winners of Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, Nonfiction
I wrote here a few months ago about reading—its power and ubiquity and transcendence of format: “The authors and publishers get it; the ways in which the stories are displayed come and go, and what matters are the story and the storytelling.” Events in the ensuing months—the Department of Justice settlement with publishers, which may … Continue reading Amped-Up Ebook Apps
The world today is clearly not that of our library predecessors, of Melvil Dewey and Charles Ammi Cutter, not even of Seymour Lubetzky or Michael Gorman. The changes that have taken place since the introduction of the personal computer and the globalization of communication over the World Wide Web are huge, and they affect in … Continue reading A New World of Data
