the perfect is the enemy of the good; the good is the enemy of the perfect?
In my Library Automation class yesterday, the concept of satisficing came up. Digression: satisficing is where I feel most acutely the cultural conflict between the librarians I read and talk with in...
View Articlediscovery interfaces in the Chronicle
Chronicle of Higher Ed article on discovery layers in library catalogs. Doesn’t say much I haven’t already seen (although if you have no idea what I mean by “discovery layers” do read it; it’s a good...
View Articlea feisty embuggerance of metadata!
The thing that really stands out to me in this post (h/t John) about a particularly picturesque problem with Google metadata is the author’s comment about Google Scholar vs. JSTOR. He knows there’s a...
View Articledata mining for fun and…
That slideset yesterday was funny, so I’ve RSSed the guy’s blog. Liked this recent post about data-mining your circ records. His university now has a recommender system (both “people who liked this...
View ArticleUpdate on Cushing’s all-digital library
Update on Cushing Academy, the school that ditched its print collection for Kindles &c — worth knowing about now that the academic year is underway. Some pros, some cons, not a lot of detail....
View Articlewhat Google ethnography and research oncology have in common
Here, we have an ethnographer talking about why (outside of academic/elite contexts) Google is not widely adopted in China. (A variety of reasons: the Google name is hard to pronounce and spell in...
View Articledigital natives need tech support too
Seems like digital natives want more tech support than they’re getting in an academic context. The quote that stood out for me: While college students are adept at manipulating complex...
View Articleshoe shopping, the long tail, and libraries
I hate shoe shopping. I know — this is grounds for eviction from my gender. But if you’d once gone into every shoe store in your hometown, asked if they’d sold your size, and they all said “no”, you’d...
View ArticleGuest post: Notes from a techie patron, part 1
One of the recurring themes of my library science education has been that I see conversations about information all the time — some at school from a library perspective, and some at home from a...
View ArticleGuest post: Notes from a techie patron, part 2
(Part 1 was yesterday. Onward and upward!) WorldCat Recall that book record I showed earlier, http://grab.by/4LEJ. FRBR nuts will note that in fact there is not one but three copies of this book in...
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