LIS + DataSci
As do-it-yourself information finding in cyberspace becomes more common, will librarians go the way of custom tailors—unusual and perhaps a little antiquated? Off-the-shelf clothing doesn't fit anybody as perfectly as custom-made clothing would, but it is good enough (and cheap enough) for most of us. Perhaps the
LIS + DataSci
While voting for ALA Council this weekend, I came up with five positive characteristics in a nominee: 1. Longer than five years' membership in ALA. Fresh voices on Council are good (see below), but please take a few season cycles to learn from the inside how ALA works before
Commerce
My German friends at Ohio State laughed to hear that I had ancestors named Biedermann. To be a "Biedermann," in German slang, is to be someone narrow and strict, someone who merely follows orders. That joshing came to mind while reading Rick Anderson's recent article, in
LIS + DataSci
(Previous posts: #1, #2, #3) After 20 years of steady but containable erosion of the library's customary position as an institution that controlled everything within itself, the final (and ultimately fatal) blow came in the mid-1990's: The World Wide Web. As the Web grew from a
LIS + DataSci
(Previous posts: #1, #2) The second crack in the century-long stability of American libraries began to arrive in the 1980s: Online databases. These databases vastly expanded patron access to periodicals without requiring an equally vast building program. The percentage of library collection budgets spent on these databases has steadily increased
LIS + DataSci
In my last post, I described the characteristics of libraries during the century before 1975. During that century, libraries faced no fundamental changes and were fully in control of how they presented themselves to patrons. That stability and control have now been shattered. Why? The first crack came with the
LIS + DataSci
Until recently the online catalog continued to contain records only for items physically held by the library system. As libraries have entered into cooperative relationships, this principle of telling "what the library has" has eroded. In union catalogs that contain records from libraries of more than one institution,
LIS + DataSci
[W]e have all kinds of tools that are organized to aid in the process of finding information that we need: telephone books, directories, dictionaries, encyclopedias, bibliographies, indexes, catalogs, museum registers, archival finding aids, and databases, among others. -- Arlene G. Taylor, The Organization of Information (Westport, Conn. : Libraries Unlimited,
LIS + DataSci
We organize because we need to retrieve. -- Arlene G. Taylor, The Organization of Information (Westport, Conn. : Libraries Unlimited, 2004), pg. 1. Leaving aside the folks who organize because of OCD… Is there a good study out there about the range of ways that library patrons use to retrieve? Librarians
LIS + DataSci
On July 20, I renewed my membership in the American Library Association online, and had that renewal confirmed by e-mail. On August 11, I got a letter and a renewal form from the ALA, urging me to renew my membership soon. The letter asks me to "renew online…and
LIS + DataSci
A paraphrase of something I wrote in 1997: Human societies have two ways of storing knowledge: Written down in libraries, archives, etc.; and memorized in people's minds. The amount of knowledge that is written down is ever-increasing, but the amount that an individual can memorize is biologically limited.
Books
My friend and co-worker Laural Winter interviews Jason Shiga, the author of Bookhunter, my favorite graphic novel. Bookhunter is the story of how the Oakland Public Library's detective squad and SWAT team cracked a 1973 book theft case. If you find the idea of a public library having