Category: Observations

  • Who are academic libraries for? Administrators?

    Earlier this fall when the Oakland A’s said goodbye to the Coliseum, there was a collective sadness for what we were collectively losing. (Months later, I still have a hard time thinking about it without choking up a little, but baseball is always so much more than the game on the field.) In thinking about…

  • Libraries, professional standards, and praxis

    Longtime readers of this oft neglected blog know I strongly believe in making sure your values are present in your work, whatever that may be. Last week as I was watching the the Twitter/X-odous to Bluesky (Hi- I’m on Blueksy!), I was reminded of so many people I stopped following and forgot about when I…

  • Preserving knowledge in the face of extinction

    I try not to be too catastrophic about the impending climate collapse, but it’s hard. Ecosystems are degrading, large parts of the planet are becoming uninhabitable, and societies are fraying. Yet here I am trying to preserve research, data, and information for posterity like somebody is going to find a report about automated vehicles from…

  • The Role of Information Professionals in the unfolding Apocalypse

    This morning the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds until midnight. It’s never been this close to midnight before – but with the real threats of nuclear war, climate collapse, increasing rise of fascism, global economic inequality, and the resulting social unrest it isn’t really a surprise that they moved…

  • 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…