I have enjoyed reading about presentations at the recent ALA annual conference. Of particular note for me are Owen Stephens’ extensive notes, available here. The ability for those who aren’t present at conferences to quickly catch up on essentials of what was discussed is, to me, hugely important and beneficial. I’m thankful for [...]

I’ve been to my fair share of conferences, of all stripes and sizes. I have to say — and this may come across as arrogant — that I don’t get a whole lot out of most of them. A well known blog that I have been reading, called Lifehacker, recently posted about the [...]

Surely the news from last week about some Congressmen unfavorably comparing the Library of Congress to the likes of Wal-Mart and UPS was one of the stupidest things I have ever read. I was genuinely shocked by the level of ignorance and, well, stupidity…shown by Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.) and Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.), [...]

Marc Meola from ACRLog writes about the Wall St. Journal article on LibraryThing. What stood out to me in his post was the phrase “Maybe I’m just being grumpy…” I am glad he wrote that, admitting that sometimes we who blog can sometimes just be in a particularly negative frame of mind. [...]

This afternoon I read a report of some kind of panel discussion at the American Library Association between three well known and highly visible librarians on the issue of “who controls the future of search.” Things were fairly ok up until I read the following statements:
“stephen: in the battle of the river and the [...]

This is the last post of the evening, I swear. I have made clear my problems with the American Library Association (ALA) in the past, and these problems stem from what I have seen from the inside, having actively participated in ALA and attended many, many ALA conferences over the years. Recently ALA [...]

Yesterday I was saddened by the news that Ross Atkinson, Associate University Librarian at Cornell, had died. I never met him but I’ve read many of his writings, so my view of him is definitely second hand at best. My opinion is that Ross was one of the most important thinkers regarding libraries, [...]

Quote “overheard” from an excellent blog called It’s All Good, derived from notes jotted down during a live symposium sponsored by OCLC at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting (known as ALA Midwinter). The full quote was “It’s like a public park for your brain” and this statement was made by one of the [...]

Some time ago I noted here that an acquaintence of mine had snagged an interesting job at ALA as RDA Project Manager. Yesterday I sat down and read more about RDA, which stands for Resource Description and Access. In particular I read through the RDA Prospectus, published by an international group called the [...]

ALA | ALA Editions names Bloss RDA Project Manager
I was pleased to see that a friend of mine, Marjorie Bloss, has landed an interesting job at the American Library Association. She will be spearheading development of a new standard for digital environments called Resource Description and Access (RDA). I was previously unaware of [...]