Email is the absolute most important tool for digital campaigns. This is true because email is still fundamentally the key to the Internet. Your library’s biggest goal in digital and in-person strategy should be the acquisition of email addresses. I have found this to be true, time and again, from my experience managing digital strategy for the libraries where I have worked and from my experience running political campaigns with EveryLibrary.
The Big Flip
By on June 29, 2016
I just returned from ALA Annual 2016 in Orlando, Florida, and besides enjoying more temperate weather I’ve also been thinking about some of what I experienced there. One experience in particular stands out. Every ALA in recent years my employer (OCLC) has sponsored a “Linked Data Roundtable” where practitioners discuss their cutting edge work with […]
An Open Letter to BOEs Everywhere
By on May 23, 2016
School libraries are popping up that are fully, even lavishly, equipped, save for one thing: a certified school librarian. Here, one New Jersey librarian explains why that can never work. Ever.
Presentation Tools Worthy of the Content | Consider the Source
By on May 18, 2016
Looking at some of the new software, it’s clear that the grammar of picture books is becoming a design structure that applies to effective presentations.
My Love/Hate Relationship with 3-D Printers in Libraries
By on April 5, 2016
We’ve seen 3-D printers shift from cool niche products to supposed must-haves. But are we achieving the dream or just printing tchotchkes?
SLJ Reviews LEGO WeDo 2.0
By on April 5, 2016
The second-gen robotics system teaches STEM concepts to elementary students.
I, For One, Welcome Our Internet Overlords
By on March 14, 2016
As reported in the Economist, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is trying to go global. That is, it is attempting to shed any remaining ties to an individual country (*cough* the US) and become truly independent. I heartily welcome this, as no country should be able to control something that has […]
Broken Furniture and Blood on the Floor
By on February 22, 2016
I’ve been troubled lately by what I perceive as a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of our transition from record-based bibliographic metadata to linked data. Although this misunderstanding can be expected, given how long our profession has been invested in a record-based infrastructure and standards, it is potentially disastrous should we prove not up to the […]
Remembering PACS-L
By on November 30, 2015
If you weren’t there in 1989, this is going to be very hard to imagine. But go ahead and try to picture this: the world without the web, without mobile (let alone smart) phones, without so many of the things that we take for granted today. The Internet was here, certainly, but only for some […]
The Things We Carry
By on November 19, 2015
A long time ago I read the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. It is an eloquent and evocative account of the Southeast Asian War and how soldiers coped with a hell they could neither understand nor survive unscathed — if they lived at all. Today I am not writing about anything nearly […]
