Family Man Librarian

Even though I’ve switched to a different area of work, I have still been handling many projects and tasks related to my old job these past several weeks. One project involved the integration of our OpenURL resolver (SFX) into our document delivery service.  A few days ago this project work completed and was successfully implemented. [...]

This week I encountered a significant roadblock when trying to use OpenURL in a situation where it is a natural fit. Let me explain the scenario. A scientific researcher at the company where I work built an extensive bibliography of journal articles on a particular subject, and wants to publish that bibliography on [...]

One of the things I am responsible for is my library’s SFX service. I am a huge SFX fan and one of the reasons for my enthusiasm is that there are so many interesting things one can do with SFX. Today I stumbled across an example SFX services window customized for the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. [...]

Last week about 45 employees from Endeavor lost their jobs as a result of the merger with Ex Libris. Among them are friends and former co-workers. I am not surprised that some were laid off; what surprises me is why some were laid off and others kept their jobs. Some who kept [...]

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, [...]

A lot of people in the library blogosphere get excited when an ILS vendor announces some kind of RSS capability for their online catalogs. I wanted to mention here some excitement of my own when I recently discovered some interesting RSS functionality for the ILS I maintain (Ex Libris Aleph 500), developed by Peter [...]

An article in the Indianapolis Star reports that the Lilly Endowment lost 20% of its value last year. This is big news because this is the largest source of charitable funds in the whole state, and the Lilly Endowment is particularly generous to educational institutions like the one where I work. In fact, [...]

Yesterday I was able to go to UIUC GSLIS at the invitation of Kathie and Bill Henderson to speak to their Technical Services Functions class. (This is the same class that I teach in online form in UIUC GSLIS’s LEEP curriculum.) They’ve invited me every year for the past 14 years. Each [...]

I have a lot of guilt and I’m not even Catholic…One of the things I feel guilty about is not posting more often and more regularly on this blog. It’s not for lack of things to write about, that’s for sure. I am just trying to catch my breath most days. There [...]

A while ago I mentioned that I had written an article for Serials Review on periodical management systems, and that I had been working for quite some time on such a system at my library. This topic continues to be of interest to a lot of folks. Recently there have been two or [...]