Category: Observations

  • Throwing People Under A Bus – How to?

    Greetings from lovely Kansas City, MO! I’m here right now for the AASHTO RAC annual meeting. It’s hot, but not as stick as New Orleans was for SLA. I suppose that’s not saying much, but it’s appreciated. I’m at this meeting to present about my vision for Open Transportation Research. I’m also here to preach…

  • Collaboration and Teamwork – practice makes perfect.

    España campeona del mundo, originally uploaded by www.valenciaclubdefutbol.blogia.com. So the 2010 World Cup ended this past Sunday and I’m going through withdrawals. (I am a bit fanatical about football/soccer. I’m card carrying member of Wednesdayite, that’s seriously a burden of love.) So pardon me, if I use a picture of La Furia Roja to illustrate…

  • IEEE Xplore and the Google Box: What’s in the function machine?

    I’m a huge fan of Google Scholar. It’s a fantastic tool for finding papers when you have the citation. Much faster than using using the OPAC or some other databases when you know exactly what you’re looking for. The problem is that Google is very opaque with how it works. I liken it to a…

  • Turf Wars: Stepping on toes in Libraryland

    I always like to joke about the number of committees I sit on. Librarians love to complain about the number of meetings we attend, and of course meetings are just the time consuming playthings of committees. (I suppose teleconferences/webinars are the time consuming playthings of groups that meet at a distance.) Maybe this is old…

  • The tension between “memory” and “complacency”

    Disclosure: I will own up to my deep seeded worries (perhaps paranoia) that libraries are in a vulnerable situation and we need to assert ourselves back in relevancy, particularly for special libraries. It’s not so much justification, but more of a reminder of our value and aligning (yes, that word) our message with that of…