Category: libraries
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Explosive Diaereses
I’ve been waiting for a while to have this title. Well, actually, not a long while, and that’s testimony to how quickly I’m able to develop things in Rails. While I think SFX is fine product and we are completely and utterly dependent upon it for many things, it does still have its shortcomings. It…
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The Librarian/Staff Divide
Every library I have worked at has had an uneasy caste system between the faculty and staff. While I understand this to extent, this delineation is used without rhyme or reason much of the time. The implication is that this means the librarians are treated as “career professionals” and the staff is merely “the help”…
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That Article I Had No Business Writing…
Is finally out. So, uh, if you’re in the market to buy a Link Resolver or just are seeking general information on one… er, check it out.
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To Free or not to Free?
Last week I was reading Dorothea Salo’s posting about OCLC’s report on library branding, and it got me to thinking about this a bit. In particular, I thought about her comment: I would want to trial-balloon a “Deep Web” play in my next survey, if I were OCLC. I would want to know how many…
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Rails Resolver Router: on Rails!
Since my foray into python a couple of months ago, I’ve been enjoying branching out into new languages. I had pitched the concept of a link resolver router for the state universal catalog to a committee I sit on (this group talks about SFX links in the 856 tag and whatnot). The problem with making…
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Envisioning Alto
I have mentioned here several times the “alternative to the catalog” project I am trying to implement at Tech. One of the problems that I’ve had is naming the project something that lets people realize what I’m talking about, without the political hairiness of saying “catalog replacement” (since that’s technically not true, anyway). In a…
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I sound my barbaric YAWP over the walls of my cubicle.
I woke up at 4:30 this morning. One could easily write this off to a variety of stresses: an article I have no business writing; a conference I have no business helping organize; a huge project that I am having problems getting started on; a house that I apparently haven’t sunk enough money in to…
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Library 1.7.02-4 pre 6
I really, really hate this Library 2.0 meme for a couple of reasons. 1) All of our problems will not, in fact, be solved with AJAX and web interfaces 2) In fact many of our problems cannot be solved by technology at all (try doing interesting and meaningful and different work with the current body…
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Reactions from Access 2005
I’ll have to keep this rather short, since the hotel wireless network is being flaky (as usual) (in fact I am having to write this while standing in the bathroom — oddly the best wireless reception in my room). Again, the conference organizers have proven why this is the only professional event I schedule in…
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But, you see, my wheel is nothing like all of those other seemingly identical wheels
I am still feeling my way around Python. I have yet to grasp the zen of being Pythonic, but I am at least coming to grips with real object orientation (as opposed to the named hashes of PHP) and am actually taking the leap into error handling, which, if you have dealt with any of…