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Recently, at a colleague’s urging, I tackled creating a page in Wikipedia for a significant female librarian. I chose Mary Wright Plummer, who was the second female president of the American Library Association, and who also served as President of the New York State Library Association, the New York Library Club, and the Long Island Library […]
I was 20 when I learned to guide. It was on my 21st birthday, in fact, when I was approved to run commercial whitewater rafting trips in California. So perhaps I could be forgiven for being surprised that the best river guides were small women. Being surrounded by larger and more muscled men than I, […]
It has unquestionably become de rigueur to speak of failing as if it is a goal to be achieved. “Fail early and often” has become a mantra coming from Silicon Valley, where it can be argued that I hail from. And I get it. Really I do. Frankly, it has a message that librarians, who […]
I know that many of you are going to laugh at this, but seriously, I delete more than I post. That is, I can’t begin to count how many times I have written a Twitter or Facebook or LISTSERV post that I have never posted. There are several reasons for this, and in this post […]
So recently I wanted to post a comment on a web site and as many web sites are doing these days, I was presented with all kinds of options for logging in via a different service that I might already be logged in to. For example: So let’s break this down. Here are the […]
OK, I admit it, I’m a hardware geek. I love hardware of virtually any variety — building, climbing, rafting — you name it. I have a thing for tools that just won’t quit. Plus, I’m quite aware of the importance of gear of many types. As I’ve said in the past, there are three things […]
No, the title does not include a typographical error. I really DO mean “the power and the gory“. Gory as in “horrific”. So…yeah. This post is about the decided ambivalence of a basic decision about Unix architecture that has dogged me (and, it must be assumed), many others, my entire life. But first let’s define […]
Anyone who has ever worked at the sprawling empire known as the University of California knows that getting anything done across the diversity of 10 “separate and not so equal” campuses can be…uh…difficult. That is why when I heard the news today that the University Faculty Senate had mandated that all “future research articles authored […]
As a commercial river guide, if you demonstrate any real aptitude at one point or another you will be assigned to be Trip Leader. Just like it sounds, that’s where the buck stops, and a lot of responsibility comes with it. Your first and foremost responsibility is for the safety of everyone on the trip. You are […]
As a passenger on a commercial river trip you would not be far wrong to think that what you are about to experience is all about having fun. Sure it is. But it is also (or can be) so much more. Depending on what you know before you arrive at put-in there are many things […]
