I've long found it strange how a new year in our artificial calendar invites people to speculate about the new decade or previous century or final millennium. This sort of thinking is nothing new. Before the turn of the first millennium there were Christian groups in Europe who were sure the world was about to end. By the turn of the last millennium, the belief that the world would end had been reduced to worrying about Y2K computer problems. People want something to worry about,no matter how trivial. Supposedly we're now entering a new decade, but then again we're always doing that. I don't feel like it's a new decade myself, since the Annoyed Librarian isn't even 4 years old yet. (My 4th birthday is in February. Gifts may be sent care of LJ. Cash is acceptable!) People claim to see correspondences between eras and decades, but I don't see them. The thirties lasted from 1929 to 1941, the sixties from 1964 to 1972, the seventies from 1973-1979, just to name three decades with a lot ...
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I want to discuss a program about "borrowing librarians," but just for fun let's first look at a way in which Republican congressmen and twopointopians/ oneohonions are the same. Republicans in Congress are taking to social media like twopointopians at an unconference, according to this NPR story. They're making YouTube videos and Facebook pages and tweeting up a storm. The Republicans and the twopointopians seem to have something else in common. "Republican strategist Mindy Finn, who helped Virginia Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell find his voice online, tells NPR's 'Members who don't have a lot of say or don't have much of a voice in Congress can use social media to talk directly to their constituents, to voters and to activists,' says Finn, a partner and blogger at the political consulting firm Engage." That quote from a Republican "strategist" sounds niftier if you don't analyze it. But edit out the verbiage and we get, "Members who don't have a lot ...
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The great thing about fall is how fast my favorite holidays come. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, all in two months. Tis' truly the season to be jolly. There were a number of topics I thought about addressing, but Christmas Eve Eve hardly seems the time to be annoyed. For example, I considered writing about a reference to the AL where a blogger claims the AL is "irrelevant" and can't believe LJ would host the blog just for page views. It seems slightly contradictory to believe a blog has a high readership and is also irrelevant, but what could be more irrelevant these days than an AL-hater. Get over yourselves already. I also considered writing about the Christmas tree made out of National Union Catalog volumes at the Loyola Marymount University Library and Christmas decorations in libraries generally. That seemed a cheery decoration to me, and a good use of a classic but increasingly irrelevant reference source. Does anyone use the NUC anymore? As a Catholic ...
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One of the stories from libraryland that caught my attention last week was Stephen Abram moving from SirsiDynix to Gale. If for no other reason, he must be relieved that he no longer has to say "SirsiDynix" with a straight face, since that has to be one of the sillier company names around, whereas "Gale" sounds sensible. ("Cengage Learning" sounds a bit pompous, though.) And Gale is sensible, of course. Vendors are popping up all over the place to provide new things no one wants or needs, but Gale has been providing great reference works for 50 years. Currently, Gale provides not only excellent reference works, but also historical primary source documents over a wide range of topics, and all in a relatively easy to use interface. In addition, I've never found their vendors in the least annoying and never got the feeling I get with some companies that they're mainly trying to screw people over at any cost. I'm not some blogger paid to pitch a product, by ...
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John Berry addressed a recent debate on whether competition will improve LIS programs, a debate prompted by the break between the California Library Association and the library school at San Jose State University. The director of the online SJSU LIS program didn't like it that the CLA partnered with the Drexel's online LIS program, thinking California was his "turf." He also didn't like it that SJSU kept encouraging students to join the CLA who didn't seem to be getting benefits. I thought everyone knew the major benefit to joining professional associations was for the associations, not the persons joining. Berry raises the issue of evaluating whether online and in-person LIS education are of  comparable quality, among other things, but notes that many LIS faculty in a listserv "say the 'competition' strengthens all LIS programs." I was too weary to plod through a listserv discussion, because in my opinion listservs should go the way of card catalogs and ...
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Yesterday's New York Times reported that publishers are delaying the ebook releases of some titles because they think ebook sales are cutting into their hardcover sales, especially given that Amazon tends to treat popular ebooks as loss leaders by selling them for $9.99. As a librarian, it's hard to know where to stand in this fight. Publishers are resisting because they haven't figured how to monetize ebooks yet. I watched for years as journal publishers struggled to adapt to a digital environment. Some of them still require libraries to subscribe to print copies to gain access to electronic copies, or block access to the last year's content online. Book publishers seem to have ignored all this, and now they're acting like they fell asleep in 1985 and just woke up. In 2001, Association of American Publishers President Pat Schroeder famously blamed the publishing industries woes on libraries. They couldn't sell books, you see, because libraries gave access to books for free. At the ...
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