Note: I really tried to make this a fair and balanced piece regarding the true cost of scholarly communication. Instead it verges off into the rant. I’m not anti-publisher or anti-profit, we all have to eat and grow and I like living in a capitalist society. I just don’t like feeling like a mug every-time … Continue reading »
How to get a (better) response from your Systems Librarian / Sys Admin / Helpdesk Support Elf …
Now its almost December, we can begin to think about cheery stuff like giving, sharing and helping others. One interaction that technically meets this description but may not be so cheery is your helpdesk queries and responses. After about 10 years supporting IT in libraries, I feel the festive need to spread some goodwill and have tried to … Continue reading »
Cataloguing to metadata event and slides
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a fantastic ‘Cataloguing to metadata’ event at Oxford. It was hosted by the Bodleian Libraries and organised by their cataloguing team and staff development folk. I started out as a trainee at Oxford, (also thanks again to staff development there for that!) so felt personally happy to be back and catch … Continue reading »
Common sense at at last?
Good news everybody! It seems Marc21 is dead (or been told to order its last meal). Last week, the Library of Congress (LOC) working group on the future of bibliographic control has announced that: the Library community’s data carrier, MARC, is “based on forty-year-old techniques for data management and is out of step with … Continue reading »
OpenURL – an example of a publisher / vendor innovation gap?
Following on from a previous post on innovation in libraries, I’ll focus on a single technology as a first example. It gets quite specific, but should be illustrative of how the market does not always manage to quite push things forward in the best interests of the customer. OpenURL is a standard/ technology/ product that has been … Continue reading »
The Innovation Gap?
MY favourite highbrow sci-fi writer / academic has posted one of his wonderful essays, this time on the relationship between science fiction and innovation. Please read it (at least once), but if you are going to force me to try and sum it up in three sentences, well … A) We lack popular culture images … Continue reading »
Future-proofing ones’ own behind …
ITV3 have been re-showing all three Back to the Future films, and whilst watching Michael J. Fox encounter past and future selves, I’ve been thinking about mine. I’ll come clean and admit that I got involved in the I.T. side of libraries partly out of a sense of self-preservation. Even ten years ago, I could … Continue reading »
Why should we even bother?
Often a thought that crosses my mind on a Friday evening when a Saturday shift looms large. In this instance however, I’m talking about reasons for sharing library metadata openly. With services and budgets being slashed in all sectors and publishers continuing to hike fees well beyond inflation, it does seem like a needless extra … Continue reading »
Fear the reaper?
Sounds like someone is trying to ring the funeral bell for the semantic web: Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mark the end of an era. I’m talking about the passing of Web 3.0 – ostensibly the era of the next great revolution in the information industry. In its short life the semantic … Continue reading »
Fogging up in the cloud …
Just spent two days this week at the Ex Libris UK user group conference, hosted possibly for the last time at the plush BL convention centre (one minor observation, the coffee there is a bit weak.) The company is making an admirable transition to the cloud environment, and seems intent on taking as many customers … Continue reading »
