Category: philosophizing
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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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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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Metasearch Metadata Metaphor
SRW/U is to Yngwie J. Malmsteen as OpenSearch is to Keith Richards. Yngwie Malmsteen is technically superior, however aesthetically unlistenable (unimplementable, in the case of SRW/U). Keith Richards is sloppy, unsophisticated and writes timeless melodies that resonate with the masses (OpenSearch is sloppy, unsophisticated — while time will tell if OpenSearch becomes “timeless” [seems doubtful,…
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Geek Chic
I just caught the end of Dark City. I love this movie, despite its cheesiness, and I think it speak volumes of you, as a nerd, as to where you stand on this flick. In general, I see the computer geek community as comprised of two camps: the slashdot community, made up of the engineering…
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Librarians are arrogant asses
Despite our waning patronage (both physically and virtually), librarians never cease their criticism of the barbarism of the unwashed masses for not adopting their love of rich metadata. “Dumbing down the catalog” “I don’t think it’s too much to ask a student to learn what the library catalog is” “Thousands of hits” “Did A9 even…