@Wood

Jun
26th

Fri

… leaders and managers are hired to amplify the value of everyone around them.

— Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management by Scott Berkun, pg. 15

Jun
25th

Thu

Search User Interfaces (Online Book) I just stumbled upon Marti Hearst’s new book Search User Interfaces and although I’ve only skimmed the first chapter, it looks great. We’re doing a lot of work with new/redesigned digital tools right now and this should be a big help. A thousand thank yous to Marti for making her book available, for free, on the web in addition to being able to buy a print copy. You rock!

Related to the first point, search is a mentally intensive task. When a person reads text, they are focused on that task; it is not possible to read and to think about something else at the same time. Thus, the fewer distractions while reading, the more usable the interface.

— Chapter 1 | Search User Interfaces | Marti Hearst | Cambridge University Press 2009

Search is a means towards some other end, rather than a goal in itself. When a person is looking for information, they are usually engaged in some larger task, and do not want their flow of thought interrupted by an intrusive interface.

— Chapter 1 | Search User Interfaces | Marti Hearst | Cambridge University Press 2009

Jun
23rd

Tue

Micro Persuasion: Is Unplugging the "New Black?" What do you know? I’m ahead of the curve. I have no problem unplugging on vacation. Of course, I don’t take a lot of time off, but that’s a different problem.

Jun
22nd

Mon

Library Snitch Crushes Dreams While I realize that the Annoyed Librarian is a little hard and one sided sometimes, this time I think that AL is correct. This library (not just the “female member”) should get the “Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” award for killing all the good PR they’ve probably done for the last year.

The College of 2020

After reading this, I was tempted to go off on several of the points that were discussed, but since I don’t have all afternoon, I’ll keep it to just one criticism. All the “convenience” and the customization that they keep talking about in this report costs money - lots of it. In fact, I couldn’t help but notice that funding was the one thing that they didn’t make a prediction about.

To be fair, their goal seems to be to try and outline the type of student and institution that will exist in 2020 and I agree with many of the points. The thing that irks me is that there is no discussion about what implications these points may have. People can’t afford higher education? Sure, I can see them turning to some kind of alternative solution, but what are the costs associated with that? People want to take classes online? No problem, but until the US invests in a next generation digital infrastructure, colleges will be hampered in what they can offer. I could go on and on and don’t get me started about the statement that just about everything is out there for free on the Internet. I’ll stop here, though, and try to shift back to more mundane things like trying to connect students to all that “free” info out there.

Jun
16th

Tue

Corporate Gibberish Generator on AndrewDavidson.com You know, I think that I’ve read some of these somewhere before! :-)

Jun
14th

Sun

'#CNNFail': Twitterverse slams network's Iran absence Although this story is about how CNN allegedly dropped the ball when it came to covering the post election uproar in Iran (I don’t get CNN so I can’t say what they did or did not do), I was struck more by the very act of using Twitter to get the word out of Iran. It must be the long-buried historian in me who wondered, “How will scholars be able to use all this primary material coming out of Iran?” I wrote my thesis on Martin Luther King, Jr. but the amount of first hand material I had access to was small, because there was no way to easily record it then. People on the front lines of major historical events are spewing out tons of first person material now through new technologies like Twitter, but will historians in the near future be able to take advantage of it? Who knows? It’s an intriguing question and one I’m sure that won’t be answered soon.

Jun
12th

Fri

It’s nice to see a generally positive library-related story in the news, but I do have a couple of gripes. First, I wish that the reporters wouldn’t refer to these library services as “free”. They’re not. They are paid for by taxpayer dollars. If you’re taking all this time to talk about how great libraries are, why not also educate people a little bit about a positive use of taxpayer money?

Second, I wish librarians would stop referring to grad school as “library school” as one of the librarians in the interview did. Yes, yes, I know all about the angst librarians feel over not being treated as professionals (not that I buy all of it) like lawyers and doctors and the snide remarks made about the rigor (or lack thereof) of LIS programs. Still, why not just say grad school? You don’t hear lawyers saying, “Oh, things are a lot different now then went I went to lawyer school.” If you did, would you hire that person? I doubt it. So why should someone take a librarian seriously when they use the phrase “library school” to refer to their master’s program?

I guess we all know who got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning! :- )