He also points to and recent article he has written on Ranganathan’s Colon Classification system as the origin of metatagging. More proof librarians have historically been on the cutting edge.
Month: November 2005
Doc Searls on the future of the web
I have only just begun reading this rather lengthy article by Doc Searls, so I am storing it here for later. He spoke on some of these issues when he spoke at UNC last fall. You can look over that presentation here. I read about the article at Dave Weinberger’s blog. Dave points to a number of other discussions on the article, but does not appear to be so hopful himself.
“Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes”
By Doc Searls on Wed, 2005-11-16 02:00. Industry News
We’re hearing tales of two scenarios–one pessimistic, one optimistic–for the future of the Net. If the paranoids are right, the Net’s toast. If they’re not, it will be because we fought to save it, perhaps in a new way we haven’t talked about before. Davids, meet your Goliaths.
Keeping up is not easy
Blogging is really time consuming. I haven’t quite figured out the secret to balancing this responsibility with work and school.
Virtual Reference Desk Conference in San Francisco
I just got back from the VRD conference. It was at the Airport Hyatt in San Francisco. It was my first visit to San Francisco and, despite the awkward location, I had a number of chances to visit the city. I made it down to Fisherman’s wharf (sea lions, and crab dinner) and North Beach (lots of coffee and City Light Books). Visiting City Light Books was cool as I had recently gotten a tour of the Beat exhibit surrounding the Keroauc scroll during Leslie’s visit. I also went to the Mission district for dinner a couple of times and got to visit Haight St. There is a Gap on the corner of Haight and Ashbury. I thought that was weird.
I enjoyed the conference. It was more focused than either the ALA or ACRL conferences I have been too, so I got a chance to talk to a number of like minded librarians. I volunteered as a conference assistant. Two of the speakers I got to introduce were Virtual Dave and Eileen Abels.
Leslie Burger’s visit…
…was very successful. About 20 students attended the brown bag lunch at the Health Sciences Library. Leslie also had time to meet with Sarah Michalak (University Librarian), Dr. Griffiths (our Dean), and Rebecca Vargha (SILS Librarian and President-elect of the ALA. About 90 people showed up for Leslie’s talk (“Transforming Libraries for the 21 st Century: A Call to Action”) and about 45 stayed after the reception for the panel (“Uniting Education and Practice: Preparing Students for Tomorrow’s Workforce”). The press release for the event is located here. A .pdf flyer is also available. We got a digital video recording of the whole event, and took a lot of photos. I will post again when they are available.