Two good posts in the archives over at Catalogablog. David talks about folksonomies, the word we love to worry about, in the same week as he discusses the fate of the Hennepin County Library Authority files, which are sadly inaccessible. When I was taking the bus down to ALA, Greg and I were in the bus terminal discussing Dewey and another guy leaned over and said “are you talking about Melvil Dewey? Are you guys librarians?” When I said that I was, one of the first things he said was “Do you know Sandy Berman?” I was happy to say that I do.
Month: January 2005
one last reading list
It was really gratifying seeing so many librarians and others putting their reading lists online. Even though we don’t do a lot of reading at our jobs, I think being well and broadly-read is an important part to being a good librarian. Here’s one last not-online reading list that I’ve been enjoying over this wintery weekend.
fingerprinted for a library card?
One of the things we did at Council was debate national ID card types of situations in a possible US future where one card would serve as driver’s license, library card, citizenship card, etc. ALA strongly urged the powers that be to be concerned with the privacy implications of such a movement and, at some level, was just against the national identity card idea. In the UK they are grappling with a different sort of privacy issue: fingerprinting children to use their prints as unique identifiers for library cards in schools. Is this another case of solving a problem that doesn’t really exist with fancy gadgetry?
“It’s far more logical to say the number of times a child will lose its library card is relatively small. You ask the child their name and you trust them. What are they saying – that children are going to be masquerading as other students so that they can illicitly obtain books?” [thanks eoin]
coach carter and the values of libraries
An interview with the real Coach Carter where he discusses the value of libraries.
So did the good students end up tutoring the struggling ones?
Carter: Yes. And you know what? We made the library a cool place to be. That was a miracle within itself. [thanks robert]
Carter: Yes. And you know what? We made the library a cool place to be. That was a miracle within itself. [thanks robert]
allibris and oclc, sitting in a tree….
Strange little bit of news that came to me via the “copy and paste a press release into my mailto form” Allibris will be offering books for sale via OCLC’s WorldCat so librarians can buy a book instead of ILLing it. OCLC will bill you, making it even stupidly simpler. No postage, no mailing & return envelopes, no messy labelling. Is this the future of interlibrary loan? Is it really cheaper to buy the book than ILL it?