Fighting through the decline

  • The political economy of public agencies manifest in the morass of bad services

    In the spirit of using this place to bookmark ideas to work through concepts and stuff, here it goes. Tuesday at TRB I was in several discussions about how the structural dysfunction of organizations (DOTs) manifest in their data programs. I then commented that the silos of different departments a manifestation of organizational history, and…

  • Hello Again.

    I think I kind of lost steam for blogging because I used Twitter threads to make long points. Twitter made it easier to engage with people who didn’t visit here regularly – which is pretty much most people. And why would they? The rise of platforms like Twitter and Facebook made it easy for people…

  • On space and realities: Navigating late stage COVID

    Precaution during the Spanish Influenza Epidemic would not permit anyone to ride on the street cars without wearing a mask, Seattle, Washington (ca.1918). Original from Library of Congress. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel. flickr photo by Free Public Domain Illustrations by rawpixel shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license I’ve been back in the office daily…

  • Working through friction towards consensus

    Anti Viet Nam Rally NYC 1969 flickr photo by Winston J.Vargas shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license Today I attended a forum for SLA 2021 Board candidates to meet and talk to members. After years of involvement and talking about the association, I’m finally standing for the board. You can read my candidate statement…

  • Thinking about libraries, data retention, privacy, and you.

    Police Surveillance (LAPD) flickr photo by Popwerks shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license A while back one of my library’s regular users asked me about what data the library’s proxy server collected about their usage and how much information was retained by the university. They asked what should have been a fairly straight forward…