I don’t like the word “branding” but am using it anyway to describe a little doodle image I recently created to “brand” this site. 
You might notice it in the address bar of your web browser. What do you think? Now if I could figure out a way to include it in the header of the current theme (Rapid Access) I’m using…
Soon I will be among friends at the 22nd annual NASIG conference held this year in Louisville, Kentucky. Mark Lindner will be along for the ride as well, which is great. The theme of this year’s conference is “Place Your Bet in Kentucky: The Serials Gamble.”
I will be joining several others in a panel presentation focusing on alternative careers in librarianship to be held on Saturday afternoon. The abstract for our presentation is “Regeneration,” “diversification” and “redesign” are buzzwords tossed around constantly in today’s job market. Those with M.L.S. degrees are facing a sea change of options in their career paths. While these new opportunities can be exhilarating and exciting, they can be somewhat daunting as well. This panel of librarians will discuss the unique twists and turns of their very divergent careers and offer suggestions on how to market your M.L.S. degree for nontraditional jobs. We anticipate and encourage a high level of discussion between the panel and the audience.
Bloggers whom I anticipate will be there — that is, aside from Mark (Off the Mark) and myself — include Karen Schneider (Free Range Librarian), Anna Creech (Eclectic Librarian), Dan Chudnov (One Big Library), Diane Hillmann (contributor to LITAblog), and maybe others I don’t know about yet.
I may or may not be blogging about NASIG experiences and sessions during the next several days. Stay tuned.
Recently Roy Tennant joined OCLC and explained his reasons for taking this step in a post on the Library Journal: Digital Libraries blog. Roy is someone whom I admire and respect, a visionary and great communicator about technology and libraries. He has done, and continues to do, a huge amount of great things.
When I saw Roy’s posting I decided (maybe foolishly) to write a comment on it (see it here). In that comment I mentioned that while I respected his decision, I didn’t really agree that “OCLC is us” and I used that forum to label OCLC as the Microsoft of the library world. I had also used that characterization in a comment posted to The FRBR Blog a few days before. This drew the ire of at least one OCLC staff member who commented on how easy it was to use labels.
I have thought this way about OCLC for years. It isn’t something new that I came up with recently. To me, OCLC is an entity always to be reckoned with in terms of library technology in the same way that Microsoft is all-pervasive in personal computing generally. That doesn’t mean that all that they do or that their business model as a whole is laudable and always good for libraries. There are other comparisons that seem to fit, including what I think are over-priced services that most libraries seem to blithely accept without critical evaluation of whether they truly meet our needs, a fierce protectiveness of intellectual property that really doesn’t belong to them (in my opinion) in the first place but instead belongs with individual libraries who’ve actually created that intellectual content.
I think there are pros and cons in evaluating OCLC. My position, such as it is, is simply that we as a library community should be wary of monopolies of any sort, that we do not just accept without questioning the premise that OCLC’s approach is the best or in the best interests of libraries, and that we value diversity in terms of options for systems and services available to us in fulfilling the missions of our individual libraries.
[Updated 5/29/2007: I did something unbelievably stupid and deleted the original version of this post accidentally. Here it is again thanks to Google's cache.]
This morning, Walt Crawford made public the fact that he no longer has a job with OCLC. I fail to understand the whys and wherefores here. All I know is, I wish I could hire him myself! If you or someone you know has a job available for which he might be a good fit, would you please get in touch with him?
We had a pretty full weekend. For the first time in months I felt capable of tackling projects such as housecleaning. Sunday we were able to go to church as a family for the first time in a long while. That evening we went to a local park on a nearby lake and had a lot of fun there. Right now I am at home, not feeling too well.
OK, this is really geeky, but I was very excited to discover this a.m. that my bank finally went live with its mobile banking capabilities. I’m not sure but it might be the first nationwide bank to roll out such a feature. It’s worthwhile to say at this point, also, that the forward-looking, easy-to-use, FREE Internet-based services provided by this bank is the main reason we chose it. For instance, I pay almost all bills online through their built-in bill pay system. Secure mobile banking is just an extension of good things they already are doing. For me, this is the missing link and I am really happy that now I can take care of bills, quickly check balances, etc. from my Blackberry. Should I be worried about security? Yeah. But I am going to use this service in spite of some security concerns.
Dan Chudnov is someone whom I really admire and respect, whose enthusiasm and inventiveness for all things library techie-related is infectious. This morning he posted a long piece on his blog (One Big Library) giving advice to others about coping with frustration, disappointment, and burn-out over acceptance, or lack thereof, of new technologies in libraries. I don’t think I’ve read anything more pertinent and worthwhile on this topic than what Dan has written here.
Yesterday, the weather was perfect, sunny and not too hot. We decided to make a trip to Racine, WI to buy plants at Milaeger’s Gardens. It is about an hour’s drive and well worth it. The kids were all restless and ill-behaved but we still managed to get several nice window boxes and a nice assortment of plants to go in them. On the way home we stopped at a nearby Wal-Mart to pick up potting soil and a small pond kit.
I installed the window boxes on our front deck and planted everything while Michele went to Target to get a few outdoor chairs plus a table. Then I set up the pond. We need to get some more potted plants besides our nice Norfolk Island pine to complete things but still the deck is transformed already.
Michele and I decided to do all of this as our combined Mother’s Day and Father’s Day presents to each other.
Another change to this blog that I made a while ago but never mentioned here is that I have mobilized it using a cool WP-Mobile plugin. By mobilized, I mean, FML is now optimized for reading on mobile devices. My eyes have been opened lately to the need to serve this category of users now that I am heavily using a mobile device myself.
Late yesterday I managed to successfully upgrade to WordPress 2.2. In that process it became clear that my old theme didn’t play nicely with the new software, so I decided to change it once more. I chose a three column theme called Rapid Access that bills itself as optimized for accessibility, readability, and fast response. I think the font size is a bit small for my liking but otherwise I like it. I especially like the fast response. My previous theme took way too long to display (it was probably not entirely the theme’s fault).
Another change is that this three column theme has the postings on the left side with two columns to the right of that. I have not been a fan of this theme style before because I tend to think that having two narrow columns together doesn’t look nice. But I changed my mind when I saw this one. Highly recommended! Go to http://onemansblog.com/2007/04/30/free-wordpress-theme-rapid-access/ to download it if you are interested.