Family Man Librarian

Now that I am working in a corporate library, I decided to try membership in the Special Libraries Association (SLA).  This is, by far, the most predominant membership organization among my peers in corporate libraries, and I wanted to understand and explore what SLA has to offer.  One of the first things I discovered is [...]

Disaffection with the traditional integrated library system (ILS) is widespread these days. Terms that are frequently bandied about to describe them are “monolithic” “inflexible” “expensive” and “unfriendly”, just to name a few. Many librarians increasingly question the level of investment that purchasing and maintaining ILSs requires, particularly in the face of users’ dramatically changed expectations [...]

Recently I was contacted by a student at UIUC GSLIS to whom I’ve been assigned as a mentor for LIS578 (Technical Services Functions). (This is the “traditional” version of the class I will be teaching again this summer via UIUC GSLIS’s distance education curriculum, known as LEEP.) This role of being a mentor [...]

Some recent developments and announcements make me think that e-archiving solutions may be the next big thing in the world of information technology and libraries. Certainly, things are heating up in this area. Several weeks ago the National Archives of the U.S. announced a contract with Lockheed Martin to develop a tool known [...]

A short while ago I attended a webcast on institutional repositories hosted by the Association of Research Libraries. Aside from the content, the delivery of and experience with attending the webcast was quite interesting. I thought it went very well and there was nice integration of live video, audio, PowerPoint, interactive questions and [...]