On Libraries and New Media, powered by Library Journal and School Library Journal
According to a newly announced Pew Internet study: The share of adults in the United States who own tablet computers nearly doubled from 10% to 19% between mid-December and early January and the same surge in growth also applied to e-book readers, which also jumped from 10% to 19% over the same time period. The […]
The title of this post is a truism that no doubt has been said in many different ways over the years, but I take this latest version from the “Bones” TV show, where I heard it again recently. Meanwhile, I heard some similar things regarding the publishing and music industries recently that reminded me that […]
On a day when the interwebs are obsessed with preventing the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) from passing the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as it’s pair PIPA in the U.S. Senate, I thought I would provide a SOPA-Free Zone. You can thank me later when this has all blown over, which it eventually […]
I first learned to write software in the early 1980s, on a Commodore PET computer (pictured) that stored the program on a cassette tape. Why did I choose to learn to write software? Because I knew that I was going to stick with working in a library — that in fact I would be pursuing […]
I recently had a very interesting discussion with someone in which the topic of “dead wood” came up. I think I even raised it. This is the issue of staff — and here I’m mostly talking about professional staff, although it can cover virtually anyone — who believe that simply showing up to warm a […]
I write this on the longest night of the year. From here on out, the days get longer rather than the nights. I think we can all get behind that. So this has me thinking about the long night for libraries. I think we can all agree that we’ve been in a long night. But […]
Welcome to my new virtual home, still a part of the Library Journal empire, but in a new location. I’ve joined The Digital Shift conglomeration of LJ and School Library Journal.
Recently, once again, I was asked to contribute a chapter to an edited collection. This was hard on the heels of completing a draft for another edited collection. And this got me to thinking about edited collections and what a scam they are. First let me explain how this typically works. A librarian either approaches […]
Probably by now many, if not all, of my readers have heard about the Extensible Catalog (XC) Project managed by the University of Rochester. Heretofore it has mainly been known for producing metadata tools useful for extracting and processing data from a library catalog. But today they have announced a user interface component to their […]
