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Between an ebook and a hard place
Last week the ever-interesting Barbara Fister observed over on Inside Higher Ed, People are beginning to notice that big publishers are not really all that interested in authors or readers; they are...
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The impact of Random House price increases
Musee Mechanique As many of you know, last week Random House raised its Overdrive ebook pricing a lot. Not 20-percent-a-lot. More like 300-percent-a-lot. Enough so that a cart of 9 ebooks I had in...
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Library Journal Design Institute, Denver
I’m going to focus on some highlights, rather than rehashing the entire Library Journal Design Institute, but overall it was a timely, highly worthwhile event, a solid mix of panel sessions and...
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DPLA West: It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an API!
First, context. On April 27 I attended DPLA West, and let me take it from the horse’s mouth: DPLA West—which took place on April 27, 2012 in San Francisco—was the second major public event bringing...
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I am The Man — and you can, too!
Library Admin is Fun! Sarah has a great post about her transition to library administrator. Because she feels awkward in that cloth she’ll likely do great. Naturally, being The Man myself (a few times...
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OCLC’s un-hire
In the few spare moments I am allotted, I’ve been working on an article (a weekend project, as my weekday pattern is commute-work-work-work-commute-gym-eat-sleep-repeat), but in the back of my brain...
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Hachette Job, and Other Pre-LIANZA Musings
I set aside my pre-LIANZA preparation to note that the theme for the past several weeks in LibraryLand is: be bold. (Warning, the following blog post is a babblish mish-mosh; I’m so busy I had to...
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The Fall Funnel of Fun
New library in Levin, NZ I took gobs of photos in New Zealand with both my iPhone and my unwieldy quasi-prosumer Kodak (sometimes cantankerous, sometimes great photos). But except for the rare...
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The last rose of autumn
O brave rose This past week we had a visitor in the library who (completely without guile) commented that the library felt very dated and dowdy. He didn’t use the word “dowdy,” but it hung in the air...
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Rediscovered Management Lessons
This is a smattering of lessons I keep rediscovering in management, which I felt like summarizing as I tick into a new calendar year. A lot of it is obvious, very little of it is new to me (and some of...
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Mellen, Sky River: what a mighty big waste…
I’m up, up, up in the air, flying over the Southwest as I head to Albuquerque and then Santa Fe for a quick visit with my mother. Sandy was able to visit her in January during a business trip, and now...
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Marriage Equality, Open Access, and Jury Duty
Equality Sign, by Emily Lloyd I’m sitting in the jury assembly room in San Francisco thinking about two historical moments: today’s DOMA case at the Supreme Court, and the singularly principled action...
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Dropped my MOOC. Picked up a doctoral program.
I’m one of the vast majority of MOOC drop-outs, but in my case my course abandonment had two causes: 1. By the end of the 5th section, I had learned as much math as I need to know for the moment. What...
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Life sans banana slicer
Dear somewhat-still-new librarian who did not receive a banana slicer (per a recent realia-based meme in which Some People were anonymously mailed banana slicers), was not anointed as a Mover &...
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The alarming five-year pin
Not long ago I had a back-and-forth with MPOW’s head of HR, who is a great HR head, by the way (and after my spring HR class my admiration for her role deepened–talk about a complex role people take...
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Snowglobes and my research quest
Today I was stopped at a red light in downtown Santa Rosa, and I looked over to see a tough guy in a muscle car with sheer delight plastered across his face. We were enjoying the same magical scene:...
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Come together, right now
“Golden Eagle in flight – 5” by Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 Tomorrow is my first convocation at my new university. For my international readers, a convocation in this...
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The importance of important questions
Pull up a chair and set a while: I shall talk of my progress in the doctoral program; my research interests, particularly LGBT leadership; the value of patience and persistence; Pauline Kael; and my...
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Change is a hurricane or a door
California Poppy, taken after last week’s lush rain My formative years as a librarian were in library systems that built themselves around the concept of aggregated strength through collective action....
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Neutrality is anything but
“We watch people dragged away and sucker-punched at rallies as they clumsily try to be an early-warning system for what they fear lies ahead.” — Unwittingly prophetic me, March, 2016. Sheet cake photo...
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