I’m trying to find a way to seamlessly integrate longer thought out posts with fewer links in with the shorter quick-link type posts I usually write. There may be some experimentation here over the next few days. For now, please enjoy the brand new Prelinger Library Blog and if you are in the Bay Area in California, please stop by and visit the Prelinger Library in person.
LIS bloggers of any stripe, please fill out Michael Stephens’ survey Who are “the Blog People?” A Survey of Librarians and their Motivations for Blogging.
I’ve been chewing over things since I got back from Internet Librarian last week. I’ve been spending the week teaching people the difference between “save” and “save as” and showing librarians how to insert pictures into text documents and the whole simultaneous blogging, and even the giant calculators seems like a distant memory. I do know that it was wonderful to be at a conference with so many smart people and not have to have some of the tired old discussions that I have at some ALA functions where I feel that I have to justify having a laptop or teaching an email class in a library setting. I also felt like a lot of the things people were talking about tended towards making things more usable — more findable, more explicable, more understandable — now that we’re over the love affair with just having gadgets. The trend towards openness, though we have a ways to go as a profession, makes me cautiously optimistic. I welcome this evolution and I’m impressed and honored to get to hobnob with people who are getting to make really Big Decisions in the library world.
That said, I gave my talk as part of the “Jenny and Jessamyn” show and it went well, even though it was short. I like to keep my high tech chops in order and as my Dad says “tell them something they don’t already know.” Unlike almost every other talk I’ve given, by the time I got to the B&B Andrea and I were staying at, there were already five or six ten blogs that had posted about my speech. It made my toes tingle. I could feel something really great, just around the corner. I came home with ideas and a renewed sense of purpose which I’m pretty sure is what these things are all about. Here are the links to people talking about my talk, go meta yourselves out.
The Filipino Librarian talks about how the capacity to experiment with technology, or not, creates the real digital divide.
Rebecca Blood wrote one of the first blogs I ever read. She turned out to be a local contact and good friend. Her husband Jesse James Garrett helped me with the design of the very first librarian.net pages and is an early and continuing inspiration. When I went fishing around for a date for their wedding, I met my current boyfriend Greg through his blog. It’s been a pleasure having all of these people in my online and offline world. Rebecca is starting a series of blogger interviews on her site. She did one with Matt Haughey [of MetaFilter, Creative Commons and and PVRblog fame], and this months she’s done an interview with me. I talk about stats, birdwatching and why this blog doesn’t have comments.
The ACLU has a good Reform the PATRIOT Act page and blog to keep people aware of the continuing challenges that are occurring as the USAPA threatens to sunset and the Bush administration tries to make it permanent. [stuff]
The British Library is quite near to King’s Cross station and I’m sure many people are concerned for their welfare in addition to the many others affected by today’s tragedy. They posted a brief update to their main page, which I think is something that all libraries should be able to do in case of an emergency. Apparently they locked the building down. Oddly this isn’t the only story about the British Library with the word tragedy in the headlines today. A British Library spokesperson had this to say:
“Kings Cross and Euston is cordoned off. “Police have advised us strongly that people stay where they are. There are staff and readers inside. We don’t know if we will be open tomorrow. We are discussing contingency plans.”
Update: The British Library has an update on their services available today here.
Incoming ALA President Michael Gorman’s last line in his [brief] inaugural address: “My completed remarks will be on my blog in the morning.” Classic.
Linked here anecdotally on the first, but mentioned in full today. Walt Crawford has a blog, Walt at Random. As someone who prints and reads every issue of Cites and Insights, I’m sure I’ll enjoy this as well.
Small update and interesting sidenote. Even though the web4lib content is being presented in blog format, it’s not really a blog. That is, you can’t comment using the comment form without being a list member. Not that this is a bad thing, but it is definitely a repurposing of the blog format in a way that produces unexpected results. Anyone who doesn’t know about web4lib should read up on it. Maybe it’s the librarian in me, but I think the list of guidelines for list behavior is sane, thoughful and thorough.
Hi. My name is Jessamyn West and I'll be your librarian today. I work in rural Vermont as a library consultant and also am a moderator at MetaFilter.com. My personal blog is at jessamyn.com. Feel free to contact me if you have questions or comments.
