Two recent articles in the mainstream press are telling us that paper books and physical libraries are dead (Boston Globe and CNN.com). One of the easiest things to forget about … Read more Death of a thousand paper cuts
There is a common assumption that trends should be identified quickly so that we can more quickly and more fully adapt to them, in order to stay competitively ahead-of-the-curve and … Read more Interior space as a social cause
Mark C. Taylor has an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times titled “End the University as We Know It,” which has been circulating rapidly on Facebook. I’m sharing it … Read more Ideas for changing higher ed
From today’s Inside Higher Ed, “Digital Archives That Disappear,” a brief article about Google’s shutdown of the historical newspaper archive Paper of Record, which it secretly purchased in 2006. This … Read more The constraining effects of information privatization: Google’s purchase and shutdown of Paper of Record
This is going to be my obnoxious post for the year, the kind of post I write periodically that leads to ugly Google results on my name. There are things … Read more Library 2.0 talk enters backwardation
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Are you an LIS student interested in activism and the struggle for social justice? Do you stay awake at night thinking about how your politics might inform … Read more Braverman Prize – Call for Papers
I am a big Netflix user. Netflix has a library of about 100,000 movies that users can watch. Because of the size of the library, much of their business comes … Read more The Netflix Prize – not what’s needed
Marjorie Heins of the Free Expression Policy Project has some commentary published on the FEPP site about an interesting copyright case. It’s a Fair Use case that even copyright moderates … Read more Blanche survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire, only to face off with the copyright police
Kevin Arthur has posted a few paragraphs from recent article by Lewis Lapham on the education and intellectual life in the United States. Kevin picked out a few choice parts … Read more Lewis Lapham on education and intellectual life in the postmodern USA
We live in an era (no blame to Baby Boomers intended) when people in positions of authority are often uncomfortable being authority figures. With a keen memory of disliking authority … Read more Reference librarians are authority figures with no jurisdiction
Jon Wiener has an editorial in Friday’s Los Angeles Times: “Pillaging Iraqi history: Shortly after Baghdad fell in 2003, the Baath Party archives were shipped to the U.S. It’s time … Read more LA Times: “Pillaging Iraqi history”
Just some scattered thoughts post-Anaheim, potential essays that will for the moment remain seeds…. It is surprising that ALA, being what it is, doesn’t have better control of its own … Read more Scattered thoughts post-conference
Here’s a brief essay in the New York Times by Edward Rothstein that I am afraid I don’t have much to say about at the moment. I think I agree … Read more The problem with cultural property
First of all, this post is inspired by a new Facebook group called “Zero Based Library School,” which derives from an analogy to Zero Based Budgeting, where nothing is carried … Read more A note on library “traditionalism”
I am going to take another stab at outlining my views on “library and non-library issues.” Last time I did it I was sloppy in the way that I stated … Read more Library and non-library issues
Library Juice Concentrate Edited by Rory Litwin Preface by Kathleen de la Peña McCook Price: $25.00 ISBN-10: 0-9778617-3-2 ISBN-13: 978-0-9778617-3-6 6″ by 9″ Published: December 2006 Library Juice Concentrate is … Read more New from LJP: Library Juice Concentrate
Fred Stoss of the SRRT Task Force on the Environment has an editorial in the Spring 2006 issue of Electronic Green Journal on the threatened defunding of the EPA National … Read more Electronic Green Journal Editorial on EPA Libraries and Access to Environmental Information
Perhaps the most pressing issue facing librarianship is one that is unlikely to receive serious scholarly attention. It is, to put it simply, a battle presently being fought between two … Read more Geeks and Nerds Battle for the Soul of Librarianship
Now that I’ve officially had my blog for almost month, I can reflect a little bit. Things might still change, but I have to confess that at the moment I … Read more Questioning the Techie Mission
Ten years ago, in the Spring of 1996, I was learning of my acceptance to library school and introducing myself to the world-expanding wonders of the internet. (I intend that … Read more Information Literacy versus “The Librarian’s Stamp of Approval”