Fighting through the decline

  • My scattered thoughts on the SLA consultants’ Recommendations Report

    flickr photo shared by she was under a Creative Commons ( BY-NC-ND ) license I’ve been meaning to write up my thoughts about the SLA consultants’ Recommendations Report for a while, but I’ve been busy. The conference, and the board meeting where this will be discussed, is next week. Time’s running out. Here are my…

  • Speak up. Create Action.

    One of my favourite albums in high school was The Decibels‘ Create Action. (They had a brief reunion in 2013. You might be able to see me dancing to their cover of “That’s When Happiness Began” by the Grains of Sand in this video.) The title track, “Create Action”, is a good anthem of actually…

  • SLA: Speak up, I can’t hear you.

    flickr photo shared by Ape Lad under a Creative Commons ( BY-NC-ND ) license Update: On 21 May, 2015 SLA signed on to the COAR statement. Way to go, SLA! This morning an announcement hit my inbox from ARL about a number of library groups denouncing Elsevier’s new sharing and hosting policy.  (I wrote about it…

  • Confusion Reigns With Open Access Mandates. Thanks, Elsevier.

    flickr photo shared by Ape Lad under a Creative Commons ( BY-NC-ND ) license One of the most tiring problems with Open Access (OA) policies is that the ground keeps shifting making it extremely difficult to be up to date. It’s easy to understand why so many authors (academics and researchers) roll their eyes and…

  • Busy Signals: How to deal with “busy” and volunteering

    flickr photo shared by Tom Simpson under a Creative Commons ( BY-NC-ND ) license Lately there’s been a lot of talk about the Cult of Busy, how to escape it, and why you shouldn’t use it as an excuse because we’re all busy. I totally get it, especially for librarians who have to be involved…