why even the future needs librarians
So I was watching the new Star Trek movie and… (bear with me here). At the end of the movie, offstage, we’ve got 10000 Vulcans on some colony, bereft of their planet, trying to rebuild their culture....
View ArticleCreate Your Own Economy (part I?)
I’ve just started reading Tyler Cowen’s new book, Create Your Own Economy. (That is to say, I’ve just finished Chapter 1.) I should preface this by saying that Cowen is one of my great intellectual...
View Articlethe perfect is the enemy of the good; the good is the enemy of the perfect?
In my Library Automation class yesterday, the concept of satisficing came up. Digression: satisficing is where I feel most acutely the cultural conflict between the librarians I read and talk with in...
View Article“why google and apple win and you don’t”
This cartoon doesn’t realize that it’s making the same claim as discovery interfaces and other current OPAC design thinking, but it is.
View Articlediscovery interfaces in the Chronicle
Chronicle of Higher Ed article on discovery layers in library catalogs. Doesn’t say much I haven’t already seen (although if you have no idea what I mean by “discovery layers” do read it; it’s a good...
View Articledata mining for fun and…
That slideset yesterday was funny, so I’ve RSSed the guy’s blog. Liked this recent post about data-mining your circ records. His university now has a recommender system (both “people who liked this...
View ArticleGoogle Translate
In the continuing saga of our information overlords, they’ve come out with Google Translate. As a former Latin teacher, I mostly love and partly dislike this system: + The on-the-fly translation is...
View Articleconcept-oriented catalogs
Thought-provoking post on concept-oriented catalogs over at Everybody’s Libraries, which I’m told is one of the top librarian blogs to read this year. Let me see if I can summarize…nah, let me start by...
View Articleall the news that’s fit to print (but not find)
Man, speaking of techie patrons not liking an interface… Someone in a web community I frequent linked to a newspaper article, noting that you could only read the first bit for free and the rest was...
View Articleme and Melvil, kickin’ people in the knees
I don’t remember who originally linked to this screed opining that librarians should gird themselves for obsolescence (oh, Tab Candy, your ability to add metadata to tab groups cannot come soon...
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