Despite seasons of budget cutbacks, education leaders are spending again. One-to-one devices are a favorite. How might teacher librarians support the strategic work involved?
Want To See More Women in Tech? Mentor Someone
By on March 30, 2015
I was not much more than a newly-minted librarian when my greatest professional mentor gave me a chance at something that would launch my career beyond the confines of my institution onto an international stage. It was in the early 90s, when the Internet was just beginning to take off at large research libraries around the United […]
Bringing CRUD Operations to Linked Data
By on March 24, 2015
Those who have labored in the database orchard know about CRUD. It isn’t the stuff you scraped off your shoe, but a set of operations that must be supported for typical database maintenance: C = Create a record. R = Read a record. U = Update a record. D = Delete a record. Then Linked Data […]
Tennant’s Technology Tenets
By on February 12, 2015
tenet — a principle or belief Having worked in libraries my entire adult life (I began by volunteering at 17), I’ve seen a lot of technology come and go. I like to say that I’ve forgotten more library technology than most young librarians know. And mostly I’m happy about that. If an acoustic coupler modem never […]
Mea Culpa: Wikipedia Comes Through
By on February 5, 2015
Recently I wrote about a Wikipedia issue based on the best information I had at the time. I know better than to rely upon sources that are irreputable, but I clearly made a mistake relying upon the reporting of the Guardian. Normally, I would check the actual source of the information, but I find Wikipedia’s […]
Building a Virtual Library to Commemorate a Tragedy
By on January 7, 2015
On July 19, 1978 I was approved to run commercial whitewater trips on the Stanislaus River by O.A.R.S. I also turned 21. I spent the next several summers rafting the Stanislaus, as well as other rivers in the west. But the Stanislaus was the first river I ever loved, and I wasn’t alone. The Camp Nine stretch of […]
One Format to Rule Them All
By on December 8, 2014
One Format to rule them all, One Format to find them; One Format to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. – with apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien It is now over 12 years since I wrote “MARC Must Die” in Library Journal. At the time that I wrote it, I think that I imagined […]
When the Astonishing Becomes Commonplace
By on November 12, 2014
Recently I’ve been thinking about the recent past and the not-too-distant future. Mostly in terms of what we have been able to achieve in imaging our world. For example, do you remember what the world was like before you could see a map and a photograph of any spot on the planet? It wasn’t all […]
How Some of Us Learned To Do the Web Before it Existed
By on November 5, 2014
Perhaps you really had to be there to understand what I’m about to relate. I hope not, but it’s quite possible. Imagine a world without the Internet, as so totally strange as that is. Imagine that we had no world-wide graphical user interface to the world of information. Imagine that the most we had were […]
A Tale of Two Records
By on October 17, 2014
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of BIBFRAME, it was the season of RDA, it was the spring of hope, it […]
