So I was a bit scattered yesterday afternoon, trying to figure out why the wireless was so flakey -- of course it turned out to be fine once we got into the presentation room itself.
The two keynotes (see our liveblogging yesterday) were both great, with very different moods that both reflected the conference theme of "Outside the Box".
Dylan Horrocks gave a really lively talk about the history of comics, neither traditional art nor traditional story-telling, a genre that's gained respectability in part because it's developed to a point where artist/authors can work outside the box in a way that can only be seen as real art.
Diane Mara's talk on Pacific people in New Zealand was very personal, at times emotional, and it was obvious that it came very much from her heart. In a way her story spoke of life outside of - excluded from - the European box; and I think alluded also to the hope of breaking out of the box that stereotypes put people in. And when else has a keynote presentation ended with librarians dancing in the aisles?
We then went to the exhibition welcome and though there are lots of the usual pens in evidence, I'm getting the impression that even the vendors have been thinking outside the box. More investigation is definitely required on this front.
Food report to date: super fruit kebabs. Generous sized glasses of wine at the exhibition welcome, and delicious orange juice. Very interesting hors d'oeuvres -- not in a bad way, more a thought-provoking way. (For example, they're currently provoking the thought, "Should hors d'oeuvres really be thought-provoking?")
Day two begins shortly; I'll embed the live-blogging for it in a new post.
Monday, 3 November 2008
Sunday, 2 November 2008
LIANZA 2008
Arrived at conference in Auckland - have attended the powhiri and chatted with a few people - currently testing the wireless and seeing if we can get onto the live-blogging website.
I'll be live-blogging the keynotes and as many of the sessions as I can (the live-blogging should be embedded on the conference website, and on Wednesday morning Meg Upjohn and I will be presenting a paper on Library on Location.
More later when we've got the wireless tamed...
I'll be live-blogging the keynotes and as many of the sessions as I can (the live-blogging should be embedded on the conference website, and on Wednesday morning Meg Upjohn and I will be presenting a paper on Library on Location.
More later when we've got the wireless tamed...
Thursday, 9 October 2008
Annoyed Librarians
The last time I noticed much general discussion of the Annoyed Librarian was at the time of the "I am not the Annoyed Librarian" meme, which seemed a nice light-hearted bit of fun. So much of the vehement disapproval of Library Journal giving the AL a column has taken me by surprise. This may be because I'm the kind of person who sails blithely over all sorts of social undercurrents; in fact I'm reminded of an old high school friend asking me a few years after the fact, "Remember when [two girls among our friends] were found kissing behind the bikeshed?" And... no, I seem to have entirely missed what sounds like it must have been the biggest bit of gossip of the entire school year.
Leaving aside the "What did I miss?" factor, though, I haven't yet seen any reason to convince me that the column is a bad thing.
Among the AL's fans, there seems to be some concern that they've "sold out", or at least compromised their voice. Somehow I don't think that's going to be a problem. I've also heard some concern about whether they can sustain a regular column, as opposed to a blog post whenever the mood takes them; but again I don't think there's any reason to think they can't.
Those who aren't fans seem to be primarily of the view that Library Journal has only done it for the expected boost in traffic, and that the journal shouldn't be a place for negative and unconstructive rants by an anonymous author.
Only for the traffic? I rather suspect so, but that doesn't make it a bad thing. Like it or not, the AL has a lot of fans; why shouldn't Library Journal make a place for them in the hopes that they'll stay to view some of the other columns? (Just for fun, substitute "gaming" for "the AL", "libraries" for "Library Journal", and "books" for "some of the other columns".)
Should the journal be a place for negative etc columns? I think it shouldn't be a place that publishes only such columns, but I don't think it should be a place that publishes only "Rah rah, we're doing great, guys!" columns either.
And are the AL's posts in fact only unconstructive? Well... yes and no. The AL is a devil's advocate: they take their arguments, in my view, to unsupportable extremes. But they do make valid points among the wilder ones. Much as I love library 2.0 and its potential, not all that potential is always purely beneficial or even practical, and if we're going to build something new we have to be open to hearing that. Just because the AL doesn't provide a constructive solution doesn't mean that they haven't pointed out a valid problem that needs a solution.
Finally: anonymous? No. Pseudonymous, yes. The difference is that when the AL signs their name, we know it's the same person who signed as the AL last week; whereas when someone writes anonymously, it might or might not be the same person who wrote all the other comments on the thread. This means that the AL does have a reputation to gain or lose, and can be held accountable as the Annoyed Librarian for what they say.
If the AL made personal attacks on individuals, that'd be different -- but I haven't seen that happen and haven't heard of it happening either. Until/unless it does, I can't think of any reason why Library Journal shouldn't give them a column.
[Random disclaimers/disclosures: a) I don't often read the AL these days - not my thing and not enough time - but I've never hated it. b) I have my own pseudonym in other parts of the 'net (discoverable with minor effort and/or lateral thinking), and I can tell you that my reputation under that pseudonym is every bit as important to me as my reputation under my birth name.]
Leaving aside the "What did I miss?" factor, though, I haven't yet seen any reason to convince me that the column is a bad thing.
Among the AL's fans, there seems to be some concern that they've "sold out", or at least compromised their voice. Somehow I don't think that's going to be a problem. I've also heard some concern about whether they can sustain a regular column, as opposed to a blog post whenever the mood takes them; but again I don't think there's any reason to think they can't.
Those who aren't fans seem to be primarily of the view that Library Journal has only done it for the expected boost in traffic, and that the journal shouldn't be a place for negative and unconstructive rants by an anonymous author.
Only for the traffic? I rather suspect so, but that doesn't make it a bad thing. Like it or not, the AL has a lot of fans; why shouldn't Library Journal make a place for them in the hopes that they'll stay to view some of the other columns? (Just for fun, substitute "gaming" for "the AL", "libraries" for "Library Journal", and "books" for "some of the other columns".)
Should the journal be a place for negative etc columns? I think it shouldn't be a place that publishes only such columns, but I don't think it should be a place that publishes only "Rah rah, we're doing great, guys!" columns either.
And are the AL's posts in fact only unconstructive? Well... yes and no. The AL is a devil's advocate: they take their arguments, in my view, to unsupportable extremes. But they do make valid points among the wilder ones. Much as I love library 2.0 and its potential, not all that potential is always purely beneficial or even practical, and if we're going to build something new we have to be open to hearing that. Just because the AL doesn't provide a constructive solution doesn't mean that they haven't pointed out a valid problem that needs a solution.
Finally: anonymous? No. Pseudonymous, yes. The difference is that when the AL signs their name, we know it's the same person who signed as the AL last week; whereas when someone writes anonymously, it might or might not be the same person who wrote all the other comments on the thread. This means that the AL does have a reputation to gain or lose, and can be held accountable as the Annoyed Librarian for what they say.
If the AL made personal attacks on individuals, that'd be different -- but I haven't seen that happen and haven't heard of it happening either. Until/unless it does, I can't think of any reason why Library Journal shouldn't give them a column.
[Random disclaimers/disclosures: a) I don't often read the AL these days - not my thing and not enough time - but I've never hated it. b) I have my own pseudonym in other parts of the 'net (discoverable with minor effort and/or lateral thinking), and I can tell you that my reputation under that pseudonym is every bit as important to me as my reputation under my birth name.]
Wednesday, 1 October 2008
Innovations in Information Delivery
I gave a talk this morning for U3A Mountfort. The slides and links are up at my website.
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
Non-English blog roundup #7
Bambou (French) reports back from the 1st Congress of the International Francophone Association of Librarians and Documentalists held in Montreal in August. Part 1 covers the success of the conference (280 attendees) and part 2 is a review of the National Library and Archives of Quebec where the conference was held (62 opening hours a week; 2000 comfortable seats; film and music rooms, services for people with disabilities, distance services, federated genealogy search engine, collection for new arrivals, etc; but on the downside strict lending rules, busy webpage, austere catalogue.)
Marlène Delhaye writes (French) "I love LISTA (Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts) (English), saying "I think it's a shame that it's not promoted more".
Álvaro Cabezas writes (Spanish) about reference management software, "one of the star products in the academic community". "The market offers various tools, both proprietary and open-source software, free or paying, desktop or [...] online". He links to a Wikipedia article comparing the various tools (English) - comparisons include operating system support, import/export formats, citation styles, database connectivity, and more.
Lionel Dujol writes Some noise in our libraries! (French) inspired by the start of Marc Maisonneuve's book "Le catalogue de la bibliothèque à l’heure du web 2.0" (The library catalogue in the time of web 2.0). He (or Maisonneuve) riffs off the concept of librarians trying to keep libraries quiet and trying to keep search results free of 'noise': "A new-generation opac must be able to give our users results, no matter the request and no matter the noise. For a user can always adapt to noise, but not to silence, Maisonneuve emphasises."
Linked from the same post is a document of requirements for the modern website of the modern library of our (modern) dreams (French) found on the French Bibliopedia. "The idea of this page is to gather everything that we expect today from a library on the web." It includes sections covering:
Marlène Delhaye writes (French) "I love LISTA (Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts) (English), saying "I think it's a shame that it's not promoted more".
Álvaro Cabezas writes (Spanish) about reference management software, "one of the star products in the academic community". "The market offers various tools, both proprietary and open-source software, free or paying, desktop or [...] online". He links to a Wikipedia article comparing the various tools (English) - comparisons include operating system support, import/export formats, citation styles, database connectivity, and more.
Lionel Dujol writes Some noise in our libraries! (French) inspired by the start of Marc Maisonneuve's book "Le catalogue de la bibliothèque à l’heure du web 2.0" (The library catalogue in the time of web 2.0). He (or Maisonneuve) riffs off the concept of librarians trying to keep libraries quiet and trying to keep search results free of 'noise': "A new-generation opac must be able to give our users results, no matter the request and no matter the noise. For a user can always adapt to noise, but not to silence, Maisonneuve emphasises."
Linked from the same post is a document of requirements for the modern website of the modern library of our (modern) dreams (French) found on the French Bibliopedia. "The idea of this page is to gather everything that we expect today from a library on the web." It includes sections covering:
- general recommendations
- the catalogue
- the user account
- social networking
- editing / CMS abilities
Non-English blog roundup #6 (from June!)
Giving up on an attempt to play catchup more thoroughly...
Biblog (Danish) reports that international conference "The Smart City And Its Libraries" is arranged by Copenhagen Libraries for Wednesday 8 Oct to Friday 10 Oct. Programme here (English).
Documentación, biblioteconomía e información writes about the battle of citation reports between Elsevier Scopus and ISI Thomson. Álvaro Cabezas, arguing from the point of view of transparency, that Scopus has been gaining ground over the last few months: "ISI is not transparent, and that which is not transparent is suspect."
Biblog (Danish) reports that international conference "The Smart City And Its Libraries" is arranged by Copenhagen Libraries for Wednesday 8 Oct to Friday 10 Oct. Programme here (English).
Documentación, biblioteconomía e información writes about the battle of citation reports between Elsevier Scopus and ISI Thomson. Álvaro Cabezas, arguing from the point of view of transparency, that Scopus has been gaining ground over the last few months: "ISI is not transparent, and that which is not transparent is suspect."
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