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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 […]
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 […]
Update: Please see this follow-on post for what really happened in the end. If you are involved in technology at all, you no doubt have heard about GamerGate. Normally at this point I would say that if you hadn’t heard about it, go read about it and come back. But that would be foolish. You […]
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, 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
No one enjoys being stalked. Well, at least no one I’ve spoken to. So recently, when I discovered I was being stalked online I felt…uncomfortable. Creeped out. Even freaked out. But this kind of stalking wasn’t even as freaky as the usual kind. I’m being stalked by retailers. And so are you. Of course I’ve […]
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 […]
I had what you might call an unusual early adulthood. Whereas most young adults march off to college and garner the degree that will define their life, I dropped out of high school at the 8th grade, attended an alternative high school (read dope-smoking, although I passed at the time) for two years, then dropped […]
